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I 




THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 


STORIES BY 


Captain 


Theodore Goodridge Roberts 



Comrades of the Trails . 

. $1.50 

The Red Feathers . . 

. 1.65 

Flying Plover .... 

. 1.35 

The Fighting Starkleys . 

. 1.65 



THE PAGE COMPANY 

53 Beacon Street, Boston, 

Mass. 




SAW HIS BOMB BURST BESIDE THE STUMP OF 

chimney/^ {See page 1^4) 



We FIGHTING 
STARKLEYS 

Or, the test OF COURAGE 


BY 

Captain THEODORE GOODRIDGE ROBERTS 

\\ 

Author of 

“Comrades of the Trails,” “Red Feathers,” " Flying Plover,” etc. 


ILLUSTRATED BY 

GEORGE VARIAN 



BOSTON 

THE PAGE COMPANY 


MDCCCCXXII 


Copyright, 1920, 

By Perry Mason Company 

Copyright, 1922, 

By The Page Company 

All rights reserved 


Made in U. S.A. 


First Impression, April, 1922 


PRINTED BY C. H. SIMONDS COMPANY 
BOSTON, MASS., U.S.A. 


MAY 20 1922 

0)C1.A661740 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Call Comes to Beaver Dam . i 

II. Jim Hammond Does not Return to 

Duty 29 

III. The Veterans of Other Days . . 56 

IV. Private Sill Acts 80 

V. Peter’s Room Is Again Occupied . ’109 

VI. Dave Hammer Gets His Commission 13 i 

VII. Peter Writes a Letter . . . .155 

VIII. The 26th “Mops Up” 178 

IX. Frank Sacobie Objects .... 203 

X. Dick Obliges His Friend .... 225 


\ 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

He saw his bomb burst beside the stump 
OF CHIMNEY (See page 1^4) . Frontispiece 

“ ' I can’t make you out/ said the ser- 
geant ” 23 

“ ' I’m hit, boys ! ’ he said ” . . . -50 

‘‘ ' Here’s one of them, sir ; and there’s 

MORE COMING,’ SAID the MAN OF MUD ” . I50 

‘‘ Standing in the doorway of the com- 
partment, Dick saluted ” . . . . 240 




XLbe dfiQbting Starkle^s 

CHAPTER I 

THE CALL COMES TO BEAVER DAM 

B eaver dam was a farm; but 
long before the day of John Stark- 
ley and his wife, Constance Emma, 
who lived there with their five children, the 
name had been applied to and accepted by 
a whole settlement of farms, a gristmill, a 
meetinghouse, a school and a general store. 
John Starkley was a farmer, with no other 
source of income than his wide fields. 
Considering those facts, it is not to be 
wondered at that his three boys and two 
girls had been bred to an active, early- 
rising, robust way of life from their early 
childhood. 

The original human habitation of Beaver 


1 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 


Dam had been built of pine logs by John’s 
grandfather, one Maj. Richard Starkley, 
and his friend and henchman, Two-Blanket 
Sacobie, a Malecite sportsman from the big 
river. The present house had been built 
only a few years before the major’s death, 
by his sons, Peter and Richard, and a son 
of old Two-Blanket, oi hand-hewn timbers, 
whipsawn boards and planks and hand- 
split shingles. But the older house still 
stands solid and true and weather-tight on 
its original ground ; its lower floor is a tool 
house and general lumber room and its up- 
per floor a granary. 

Soon after the completion of the new 
house the major’s son Richard left Beaver 
Dam for the town of St. John, where he 
found employment with a firm of mer- 
chants trading to London, Spain and the 
West Indies. He was sent to Jamaica; and 
2 


CALL COMES TO BEAVER DAM 


from that tropic isle he sent home, at one 
time and another, cases of guava jelly and 
^‘hot stuff,” a sawfish’s saw and half a dozen 
letters. From Jamaica he was promoted 
to London; and as the years passed, his 
letters became less and less frequent until 
they at last ceased entirely. So much for 
the major’s son Richard. 

Peter stuck to the farm. <He was a big, 
kind-hearted, quiet fellow, a hard worker, 
a great reader of his father’s few books. 
He married the beautiful daughter of a 
Scotchman who had recently settled at 
Green Hill — a Scotchman with a red beard, 
a pedigree longer and a deal more twisted 
than the road to Fredericton, a mastery of 
the bagpipes, two hundred acres of wild 
iland and an empty sporran. Of Peter 
Starkley and his beautiful wife, Flora, 
came John, who had his father’s steadfast- 
3 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 


ness and his mother’s fire. He went farther 
afield for his wife than his father had gone 
— out to the big river, St. John, and down 
it many miles to the sleepy old village and 
elm-shaded meadows of Gagetown. It 
was a long way for a busy young farmer to 
go courting; but Constance Emma Garden 
was worth a thousand longer journeys. 

When Henry, the oldest of the five 
Starkley children, went to college to study 
civil engineering, sixteen-year-old Peter, 
fourteen-year-old Flora, twelve-year-old 
Dick and dght-year-old Emma were at 
home. Peter, who was done with school, 
did a man’s work on the farm; he owned a 
sorrel mare with a reputation as a trotter, 
contemplated spending the next winter in 
the lumber woods and planned agriculture 
activities on a scale and of a kind to astonish 
his father. 


4 


CALL COMES TO BEAVER DAM 


On a Saturday morning in June Dick 
and Flora, who were chums, got up even 
earlier than usual. They breakfasted by 
themselves in the summer kitchen of the 
silent house, dug earthworms in the rich 
brown loam of the garden and, taking their 
fishing rods from behind the door of the 
tool house, set out hurriedly for Frying 
Pan River. When they were halfway to 
the secluded stream they overtook Frank 
Sacobie, the great-grandson of Two-Blanket 
Sacobie, who had helped Maj. Richard 
Starkley build his house. 

The young Malecite’s black eyes lighted 
pleasantly at sight of his friends, but his 
lips remained unsmiling. He was a very 
thin, small-boned, long-legged boy of thir- 
teen, clothed in a checked cotton shirt and 
the cut-down trousers of an older Sacobie. 
He did not wear a hat. His straight black 


5 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

hair lay in a fringe just above his eyebrows. 

“Didn’t you bring any worms?” asked 
Flora. 

“Nope,” said Frank. 

“Or any luncheon?” asked Dick. 

“Nope,” said Frank. “You two always 
fetch plenty worms and plenty grub.” 

He led the way along a lumbermen’s 
winter road, and at last they reached the 
Frying Pan. Baiting their hooks, they 
fell to fishing. 

The trout were plentiful in the Frying 
Pan; they bit, they yanked, they pulled. 
The three young fishers heaved them ashore 
by main force and awkwardness — as folk 
say round Beaver Dam — and by noon the 
three had as many fish as they could com- 
fortably carry. So, winding up their lines, 
they washed their hands and sat down in 
a sunny place to lunch. All were wet, for 
6 


CALL COMES TO BEAVER DAM 

all had fallen into the river more than once. 
Dick had his left hand in a bandage by that 
time ; he had embedded a hook in the fleshy 
part of it and had dug it out with his jack- 
knife. 

“That’s nothing! Just a scratch!” he 
said in the best offhand military manner. 
“My great-grandfather once had a Russian 
bayonet put clean through his shoulder.” 

“Guess my great-gran’father did some 
fightin’, too,” remarked Frank Sacobie. 
“He was a big chief on the big river.” 

“No, he didn’t,” said Dick. “He was a 
chief, all right; but there wasn’t any fight- 
ing on the river in his day. He was Two- 
Blanket Sacobie. I’ve read all about him 
in my great-grandfather’s diary.” 

“Don’t mean him,” said Frank. “I 
mean Two-Blanket’s father’s father’s 
father. His name was just Sacobie, and 
7 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

his mark was a red canoe. He fought the 
English and the Mohawks. All the Male- 
cites on the big river were his people, and 
he was very good friend to the big French 
governors. The King of France sent him 
a big medal. My grandmother told me all 
about it once. She said how Two-Blanket 
got his name because he sold that medal to 
a white man on the Oromocto for two blan- 
kets; and that was a long time ago — way 
back before your great-gran’father ever 
come to this country. I tell you, if I want 
to be a soldier, I bet I would make as good 
a soldier as Dick.’’ 

^^Bet you wouldn’t,’’ retorted Dick. 

^^All right. I’m goin’ to be a soldier — 
and you’ll see. I’m going into the militia 
as soon as I’m old enough.” 

‘‘So’m I.” 

Flora laughed. ^Who will you fight 
8 


CALL COMES TO BEAVER DAM 


with you when you are in the militia?” she 
asked. 

The boys exchanged embarrassed glances. 

‘T guess the militia could fight all right 
if it had to,” said Dick. 

course it could,” said Frank. 

For four years after the conversation 
that took place on the bank of Frying Pan 
River Flora and Dick and the rest of the 
Starkley family except Henry lived on in 
the quiet way of the folk at Beaver Dam. 
The younger children continued to go daily 
to school at the Crossroads, to take part 
in the lighter tasks of farm and house, to 
play and fish and argue and dream great 
things of the future. 

Peter spent each winter in the lumber 
woods. In his nineteenth year he invested 
hi% savings in a deserted farm near Beaver 
9 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

Dam and passed the greater part of the 
summer of 1913 in repairing the old barn 
on his new possession, cutting bushes out of 
the old meadows, mending fences and clear- 
ing land. 

That was only a beginning he said. He 
would own a thousand acres before long 
and show the people of Beaver Dam — in- 
cluding his own father — how to farm on a 
big scale and in an up-to-date manner. 

Henry, the eldest Starkley of this gener- 
ation, had completed his course at college 
and got a job with a railway survey party 
in the upper valley of the big river. He 
proved himself to be a good engineer. 

In the spring of 1914 Frank Sacobie, now 
seventeen years of age, left Beaver Dam to 
work in a sawmill on the big river. Peter 
Starkley invested his winter’s wages in an- 
other mare, two cows and a ton of chemical 


10 


CALL COMES TO BEAVER DAM 


fertilizers. He ploughed ten acres of his 
meadows and sowed five with oats, four to 
buckwheat, and planted one to potatoes. 
The whole family was thrilled with the ro- 
mance of his undertaking. His father 
helped him to put in his crop; and Dick 
and Flora found the attractions of Peter’s 
farm irresistible. The very tasks that they 
classed as work at home they considered as 
play when performed at ^Teter’s place.” 
In the romantic glow of Peter’s agricul- 
tural beginning Dick almost resigned his 
military ambitions. But those ambitions 
were revived by Peter himself; and this is 
how it happened. 

Peter planned to raise horses, and he 
felt that the question what class of horse to 
devote his energies to was very important. 
One day late in June he met a stranger in 
the village of Stanley, and they ^‘talked 


11 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

horse.” The stranger advised Peter to 
visit King’s County if he wanted knowledge 
on that subject. 

^‘Enlist in the cavalry,” he said — ^^the 
8th, Princess Louise, New Brunswick Hus- 
sars. That will give you a trip for 
nothin’ — two weeks — and a dollar a day — 
and a chance to see every sort of horse that 
was ever bred in this province, right there 
in the regiment. Bring along a horse of 
your own, and the government will pay you 
another dollar a day for it — and feed it. I 
do it every year, just for a holiday and a bit 
of change.” 

It sounded attractive to Peter, and two 
weeks later he and his black mare set off for 
King’s County to join the regiment in its 
training camp. In his absence Dick and 
Flora looked after the sorrel mare, his cows 
and his farm. Two weeks later Peter and 
12 


CALL COMES TO BEAVER DAM 


the mare returned; the mare was a little 
thinner than of old, and Peter was full of 
talk of horses and soldiering. Dick’s mili- 
tary ambitions relit in him like an explosion 
of gunpowder. 

Then came word of the war to Beaver 
Dam. 

The folk of Beaver Dam, and of thou- 
sands of other rural communities, were 
busy with their haying when Canada 
offered a division to the mother country, for 
service in any part of the world. Militia 
officers posted through the country, seek- 
ing volunteers to cross the ocean and to 
bear arms against terrific Germany. 

Peter, now in his twentieth year, wished 
to join. 

^^And what about your new farm and ail 
your great plans?” asked John Starkley. 

‘‘Dick and I will look after his farm for 


13 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

him,” said Flora. “We can harvest his 
crops and — ” 

Just then she looked at her mother and 
suddenly became silent. Mrs. Starkley’s 
face was very white. 

“If the need for men from Canada is 
great, other divisions will be called for,” 
said the father. “At present, only one di- 
vision has been asked for — and I think 
that can easily be filled with seasoned 
militiamen.” 

“Some one drove past the window!” ex- 
claimed Flora. 

The door opened and a young man, in 
the khaki service uniform of an officer, en- 
tered the room. He halted, removed his 
cap and grinned broadly at the astonished 
family. 

“Henry!” cried Mrs. Starkley, pressing 
a hand swiftly and covertly to her side. 

14 


CALL COMES TO BEAVER DAM 


Her husband found nothing to say just 
then. Dick and Flora and Errima ran to 
Henry and began asking questions and ex- 
amining and fingering his belt, the leather 
strapping of his smart riding breeches, 
even his high, brown boots and shining 
spurs. 

^What are you, Henry?” asked Flora, 
sapper — an engineer.” 

‘‘Are you an officer?” asked Dick. 

“Lieutenant, ist Field Company, Cana- 
dian Engineers — that’s what I am. Hope 
you approve of my boots.” 

“Are you going, Henry?” asked Peter, 
with a noticeable hitch in his voice and a 
curious expression of disappointment and 
relief in his eyes. 

“Yes, I’m to join my unit at the big mo- 
bilization camp in Quebec in ten days,” re- 
plied Henry. 


15 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

John Starkley put a hand on Peter’s 
shoulders. ‘‘Then you will wait, Peter,” 
he said. 

“You’re needed here — and we must keep 
you as long as we can. One at a time is 
enough.” 

“Pll wait now, but I will go with the next 
lot,” said Peter. 

Henry had nine days in which to arrange 
his affairs, and no affairs to arrange. He 
was in high spirits and proud of his com- 
mission, but he put on an old tweed suit 
the next morning and helped with the last 
of the haying on the home farm and on 
Peter’s place. When the nine days were 
gone he donned his uniform again and 
drove away to the nearest railway station 
with his mother and father and little 
Emma. He wrote frequent entertaining 
letters from the big camp at Valcartier. 

16 


CALL COMES TO BEAVER DAM 


On the 29th day of September he 
embarked at Quebec ; the transports 
gathered in Gaspe Basin and were joined 
there by their escort of cruisers ; the great 
fleet put out to sea — the greatest fleet that 
had ever crossed the Atlantic — bearing 
thirty-three thousand Canadian soldiers to 
the battlefields of Europe instead of the 
twenty thousand that had been originally 
promised. 

At Beaver Dam Peter worked harder 
than ever, but with a look in his eyes at 
times that seemed to carry beyond the job 
in hand. A few weeks ago he had expe- 
f rienced a pardonable glow of pride and self- 
satisfaction when people had pointed him 
out as the young fellow who had bought 
the old Smith place and who was going to 
farm in a big way; now it seemed to him 
that the only man worth pointing out was 
17 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 


the man who had enlisted to fight the 
swarming legions of Germany. 

He did not invest in any more live stock 
that fall. He sold all of the oats and straw 
that he did not need for the wintering of his 
two mares and two cows. He did not look 
for a job in the lumber woods. His 
potatoes were a clean and heavy crop; and 
he went to Stanley to sell them. That was 
early in October. 

The storekeeper there was a man named 
Hammond, who dealt in farm produce on 
a large scale and who shipped to the cities 
of the province. He engaged to take 
Peter’s crop at a good price, then talked 
about the war. One of his sons, a lieuten- 
ant in the militia, had sailed with the first 
contingent. They talked of that young 
man and Henry and others who had gone, 
am off with the next lot,” said Peter. 

18 


CALL COMES TO BEAVER DAM 


^‘That will be soon enough,” said the mer- 
chant thoughtfully. ^‘My daughter, Vivia, 
has been visiting in Fredericton, and she 
tells me there is talk of a second division 
already. Jim says he is going with the next 
lot, too. That will leave me without a son 
at all, but I haven’t the face to try to talk 
him out of it.” 

Peter accepted an invitation to have 
dinner with the Hammonds. He knew the 
other members of the family slightly — Mrs. 
Hammond, Vivia and Jim. Jim, who was 
a year or two older than Peter, was a thick- 
set, dull-looking young man with a reputa- 
tion as a shrewd trader. He was his 
father’s chief assistant in the business. 
Patrick, the son who had sailed with the 
first contingent, had a reputation as a fisher- 
man and hunter, which meant that he was 
considered as frivolous and that he had no 


19 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

standing at all as a business man. Vivia, 
the daughter, resembled Patrick rather than 
Jim. She was about seventeen years old. 
Peter, who had not seen her for twelve 
months, wondered how such a heavy duffer 
as Jim Hammond came by such a sister. 

During the meal Peter paid a great deal 
of attention to everything Vivia Hammond 
said, and Vivia did more talking than any- 
one else at the table; and yet by the time 
Peter was on the road for Beaver Dam he 
could not remember a dozen words of all 
the hundreds she had spoken. Likewise, 
he attended her with his eyes as faithfully 
as with his ears ; and yet by the time he was 
halfway home his mind’s picture of her was 
all gone to glimmering fragments. The 
more he concentrated his thoughts upon her 
the less clearly could he see her. 

He laughed at himself. He could not 


20 


CALL COMES TO BEAVER DAM 


remember ever having been in a like diffi- 
culty before. Well, he could afford to 
laugh, for, after all, he lived within a 
reasonable distance of her and could drive 
over again any day if his defective memory 
troubled him seriously. And that is 
exactly what he did, — and on the very next 

day at that, half believing even himself 

that he went to talk about enlisting, and the 
war in general, with her heavy brother. 
He did not see Jim on that occasion, and 
during a ten-minutes’ interview with Vivia 
he did not say more than a dozen words. 

On the 4th of November Peter read in the 
Fredericton Harvester that recruiting had 
begun in the city of St. John for the 26th 
Infantry Battalion, a newly authorized unit 
for overseas service. The family circle at 
Beaver Dam sat up late that night. Peter 
talked excitedly, and the others listened in 


21 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

silence. Dick’s eyes shone in the lamp- 
light. 

Peter drove over to Stanley early the next 
morning and there took the train to Fred- 
ericton, and from Fredericton to St. John. 
He felt no military thrill. Loneliness and 
homesickness weighed on him already — 
loneliness for his people, for the wide home 
kitchen and bright sitting-room, for his own 
fields. 

He reached the big city by the sea after 
dark. The traffic of the hard streets, the 
foggy lights and the heedless, hurrying 
crowds of people added bewilderment to his 
loneliness. With his baggage at his feet, he 
stood in the station and gazed miserably 
around. 

Peter Starkley did not stand there un- 
noticed. Dozens of the people who pushed 
past him eyed him with interest and won^ 
22 





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CALL COMES TO BEAVER DAM 


dered what he was waiting for. He was so 
evidently not of the city. He looked at 
once rustic and distinguished. But no one 
spoke to him until a sergeant in a khaki 
service uniform caught sight of him. 

“I can’t make you out,” said the sergeant, 
stepping up to him. 

‘T can place you,” he said. ‘‘You’re a 
sergeant.” 

“Right,” returned the other. “And 
you’re from the country. Your big felt hat 
tells me so — and your tanned face. But I 
can see that you’re a person of some impor- 
tance where you come from.” 

Peter blushed. “I am a farmer and a 
trooper in the 8th Hussars, and I have come 
here to enlist for overseas with the new in- 
fantry battalion,” he said. 

“That’s what I hoped!” exclaimed the 
sergeant. “Come along with me, lad. You 


23 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 


are for the 26th Canadian Overseas In- 
fantry Battalion.” 

The sergeant, whose name was Hammer, 
was a cheery, friendly fellow. He was also 
a very keen soldier and entertained a high 
opinion of the military qualities of the new 
battalion. On reaching the armory of the 
local militia regiment, now being used as 
headquarters of the new unit. Hammer led 
Peter straight to the medical officer. The 
doctor found nothing the matter with the 
recruit from Beaver Dam. Then Hammer 
paraded him before the adjutant. Peter 
answered a few questions, took a solemn 
oath and signed a paper. 

“Now you’re a soldier, a regular soldier,” 
said the sergeant and slapped him on the 
back. “Come along now, and in half an 
hour I’ll have you fitted into a uniform as 
trim as my own.” 


24 


CALL COMES TO BEAVER DAM 


Within a month Peter Starkley had dis- 
tinguished himself as a steady soldier; he 
had attained to the rank of lance corporal, 
and then of corporal. His steadiness was 
largely owing to homesickness. Of his few 
intimates the closest was Sergt. Hammer. 

Jim Hammond did not join the regiment 
until close upon Christmas. He was found 
physically fit; and, as a result of a request 
made by Peter to Hammer and by the ser- 
geant to Lieut. Scammell, and by the lieu- 
tenant to the adjutant, he became a member 
of the same platoon as Peter. Not only 
that, he became one of Hammer’s section, 
in which Peter was a corporal. 

Peter felt that he should like to be good 
friends with Jim Hammond, but he did not 
give a definite reason even to himself for 
that wish. Jim, in his own person, was 
25 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

not attractive to him. Peter felt misgivings 
when Jim, within two days of donning his 
uniform, began to grumble about the sever- 
ity of the training. Three days later Dave 
Hammer, in his official capacity as a section 
commander, fell upon Jim Hammond in 
his official capacity as a private soldier. 
Reason and justice, as well as authority, 
were with the sergeant. Jim came to Peter 
that evening. 

“Look a-here, who does Dave Hammer 
think he is, anyhow?’’ he asked. 

“I guess he knows who he is,” replied 
Peter. 

“Well, whoever he is,” Hammond de- 
clared wrathfully, “I won’t be bawled out 
by him. I guess Pm as good a man as he is 
— and better.” 

“You’ll have lots of chances, from now 
on, to show how good a man you are. Act- 


26 


CALL COMES TO BEAVER DAM 


ing as you did on the route march this after- 
noon doesn’t show it.” 

Hammond’s face darkened. 

^Ts that so ?” he retorted. ^‘Well, I’ll tell 
you now I didn’t come soldiering to be 
taught my business by you or any other 
bushwhacker from Beaver Dam. You got 
two stripes, I see. I’d have two stars if I 
took to licking people’s boots the way you 
do, Peter Starkley.” 

Peter bent forward, and his lean face 
hardened, and his dark eyes glinted coldly. 

“I don’t want to have trouble with you, 
Jim,” he said, and his voice was no more 
than a whisper, ^‘but it will happen if you 
don’t look out. I don’t lick any man’s 
boots! If I hear another word like that 
out of you. I’ll lick something — and that 
will be you! Do you get me?” 

He looked dangerous. Hammond tried 
27 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

to glare him down, but failed. Ham- 
mond’s own eyes wavered. He grunted 
and turned away. The next morning he 
applied for a Christmas pass, which was re- 
fused on the ground that the men who had 
joined first should be the first to receive 
passes. He felt thoroughly ill-used. 


28 


CHAPTER II 


JIM HAMMOND DOES NOT RETURN 
TO DUTY 

P ETER STARKLEY got home to 
Beaver Dam for New Year’s Day 
on a six days’ pass. Jim Hammond 
had also tried to get a pass, but he had 
failed. Peter found his homesickness in- 
creased by those six days; but he made 
every effort to hide his emotions. He 
talked bravely of his duties and his com- 
rades, and especially of Dave Hammer. 
He said nothing about Jim Hammond ex- 
cept when questioned, and then as little as 
possible. 

He polished his buttons and badges every 
morning and rolled his putties as if for 
parade. The smartness of his carriage 
gave a distinx:tion even to the unlovely khaki 


29 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

service uniform of a British noncommis- 
sioned officer. He looked like a guardsman 
and felt like a schoolboy who dreaded the 
approaching term. He haunted the barns 
and stables of the home farm and of his 
own place and tramped the snow-laden 
woods and blanketed fields. In spite of 
his efforts to think only of the harsh and 
foreign task before him, he dreamed of 
clearings here and crops there. The keen, 
kindly eyes of his parents saw through to 
his heart. 

One day of the six he spent in the village 
of Stanley. He called first at Hammond’s 
store, where he tried to give Mr. Hammond 
the impression that he had dropped in 
casually, but as he had nothing to sell and 
did not wish to buy anything he failed to 
hoodwink the storekeeper. Mr. Hammond 
was cordial, but seemed worried. 


30 


JIM HAMMOND 

He complimented Peter on his promotion 
and his soldierly appearance. 

‘^Glad you got home,” he said. ^Wish 
Jim could have come along with you, but 
he writes as how they won’t give him a 
pass. Seems to me it ain’t more than only 
fair to let all the boys come home for Christ- 
mas or New Year’s.” 

^^Then there wouldn’t be any one left to 
carry on,” said Peter. ‘^They’ve fixed it 
so that those who have been longest on the 
job get the first passes ; but I guess every one 
will get home for a few days before we 
sail.” 

^‘Jim says the training — the drill and all 
that — is mighty hard,” continued Mr. Ham- 
mond. 

^^Some find it so, and some don’t,” re- 
plied Peter awkwardly. guess it’s what 
you might call a matter of taste.” 

31 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

“Like enough,” said the storekeeper, 
scratching his chin. “It’s a matter of 
taste — and not to Jim’s taste, that’s 
sure.” 

Peter felt relieved to see that Mr. Ham- 
mond seemed to understand the case. He 
was about to elaborate on the subject of 
military training when a middle-aged man 
wearing a bowler hat and a fur-lined over- 
coat turned from the counter. He had a 
square, clean-shaven face and very bright 
and active black eyes. 

“Excuse me, corporal,” the stranger said, 
“but may I horn in and inquire what you 
think of it yourself?” 

“You can ask if you want to, Mr. Sill,” 
said Mr. Hammond, “but you won’t hear 
any kick out of Peter Starkley, whether he 
likes it or not.” 

“It’s easier than working in the woods, 
32 


JIM HAMMOND 

either chopping or teaming,” said Peter 
pleasantly, “and I’ll bet a dollar it is a 
sight easier than the real fighting will 
be.” 

“That’s the way to look at it, corporal,” 
said the stranger. “I guess that in a war 
like this a man has to make up his mind 
to take the fun and the ferocity, the music 
and the mud, and the pie and the pain, 
just as they come.” 

“I guess so,” said Peter. 

The stranger shook his hand cordially 
and just before he turned away remarked, 
“Maybe you and I will meet again sooner 
than you expect.” 

“Who is he, and what’s he driving at?” 
asked Peter, when the stranger had left 
the store. 

“He is a Yank, and a traveler for Mad- 
dock & Co. of St. John, and his name is 
33 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

Hiram Sill — but I don’t know what he is 
driving at any more than you do,” replied 
Mr. Hammond. 

The storekeeper invited Peter to call 
round at the house and to stay to dinner and 
for as long as he liked afterwards. Peter 
accepted the invitatio'n. The Hammond 
house stood beside the store, but farther back 
from the road. It was white and big, with 
a veranda in front of it, a row of leafless 
maples, a snowdrifted lawn and a picket 
fence. Vivia Hammond opened the door 
to his ring. From behind the curtain of 
the parlor window she had seen him ap- 
proach. 

At dinner Peter talked more than was 
usual with him; something in the way the 
girl listened to him inspired him to conver- 
sation. At two o’clock he accompanied her 
to the river and skated with her. They 
34 


JIM HAMMOND 

had such parts of the river as were not 
drifted with snow to themselves, except for 
two little boys. The little boys, interested 
in Peter as a military man, kept them con- 
stantly in sight. Peter felt decidedly hos- 
tile toward those harmless boys, but he was 
too shy to mention it to Vivia. He was de- 
lighted and astonished when she turned 
upon them at last and said : 

^^Billy Brandon, you and Jack had better 
take off your skates and go home.” 

“I guess we got as much right as anybody 
on this here river,” replied Billy Brandon, 
but there was a lack of conviction in his 
voice. 

“You were both in bed with grippe only 
last week,” Vivia retorted ; “but Fll call in 
at your house and ask your mother about 
it on my way up the hill.” 

The little boys had nothing to say to that. 


35 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 


They maintained a casual air, skated in cir- 
cles and figures for a few minutes and then 
went home. For ten minutes after that the 
corporal and the girl skated in an electrical 
silence, looking everywhere except at each 
other. Then Peter ventured a slanting 
glance across his left shoulder at her little 
fur-cuddled face. Their eyes met. 

‘Toor Mrs. Brandon can’t manage those 
boys,” she said. “But they are very good 
boys, really. They do everything I tell 
them.” 

“Why shouldn’t they? But I’m glad 
they’re gone, anyway,” he replied, in a voice 
that seemed to be tangled and strangled in 
the collar of his greatcoat. 

When Vivia and Peter returned to the 
house the eastern sky was eggshell green 
and the west, low along the black forests, 
as red as the. draft of a stove. Their con- 


JIM HAMMOND 

versation had never fully recovered after 
the incident of the two little boys. Won- 
derful and amazing thoughts and emotions 
churned round in Peter’s head and heart, 
but he did not venture to give voice to them. 
They bewildered him. He stayed to tea 
and at that comfortable meal Mr. and Mrs. 
Hammond did the talking. Vivia and 
Peter looked at each other only shyly as if 
they were afraid of what they might see in 
each other’s eyes. 

At last Peter went to the barn and har- 
nessed the mare. Then he returned to the 
house to say good night to the ladies. That 
accomplished, Vivia accompanied him to 
the front door. Beyond the front door, as 
a protection against icy winds and drifting 
snow, was the winter porch — not much big- 
ger than a sentry box. Stepping across the 
threshold, from the warm hall into the 
37 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

porch, Peter turned and clutched and held 
the girl’s hand across the threshold. The 
tumult of his heart flooded up and smoth- 
ered the fear in his brain. 

never spent such a happy day in all 
my life,” he said. 

Vivia said nothing. And then the mis- 
chief got into the elbow of the corporal’s 
right arm. It twitched; and, since his 
right hand still clasped Vivia’s hand, the 
girl was jerked, with a little skip, right out 
of the hall and into the boxlike porch. 

Two seconds later Peter pulled open the 
porch door and dashed into the frosty night. 
He jumped into the pung, and away went 
the mare as if something of her master’s 
madness had been communicated to her. 
The corporal had kissed Vivia! 

Peter returned to his battalion two days 
later. In St. John he found everything 
38 


JIM HAMMOND 

much as usual. Hammer was as brisk and 
soldierly as ever, but Jim Hammond was 
more sulky than before. Peter considered 
the battalion with a new interest. Life, 
even away from Beaver Dam, seemed more 
worth while, and he went at hi^s work with 
a jump. He wrote twice a week to Vivia, 
spending hours in the construction of each 
letter and yet always leaving out the things 
that he wanted most to write. The girl’s 
replies were the results of a similar literary 
method. 

The training of the battalion went on, 
indoors and out, day after day. In March, 
Jim Hammond went home for six days. 
By that time he was known throughout the 
battalion as a confirmed sulker. The six 
days passed ; the seventh day came and went 
without sight or news of him, and then the 
adjutant wired to Mr. Hammond. No 
39 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

reply came from the storekeeper. Lieut. 
Scammell questioned Peter about the fam- 
ily. Peter told what he knew — that the 
Hammonds were fine people, that one son 
was an officer already in England, and that 
the father was an honest and patriotic citi- 
zen. So another wire was seat from the 
orderly room. That, like the first, failed 
to produce results. 

The adjutant, Capt. Long, then sent for 
Peter. This officer was not much more than 
five feet high, despite the name of his 
fathers, and was built in proportion. It 
tickled the humor of the men to see such a 
little fellow chase ten hundred bigger fel- 
lows round from morning until night. 

“You are to go upriver and find out why 
Private Hammond has not returned to 
duty,” said the captain. 

“Yes, sir,” said Peter. 

40 


JIM HAMMOND 

‘‘Inform me by wire,” continued the cap- 
tain. “Use your brains. I am sending 
you alone, because I want to give Ham- 
mond a chance for the sake of his brother 
overseas. Here are your pass, your rail- 
way warrant and a chit for the paymaster. 
That’s all, Corp. Starkley.” 

Peter saluted and retired. He reached 
Fredericton that night and the home vil- 
lage of Jim Hammond by noon of the next 
day. He went straight to the store, where 
Mr. Hammond greeted him with astonish- 
ment. Peter saw no sign of Jim. 

“I didn’t expect to see you back so soon,” 
said Mr. Hammond. 

“I got a chance, so I took it,” replied 
Peter. “How’s all the family?” 

The storekeeper smiled. “The women- 
folk are well,” he said. 

Peter saw that he had come suddenly to 


41 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

the point where he must exercise all the 
tact he possessed. He felt keenly embar- 
rassed. 

‘‘Did you get a telegram?” he asked. 

“No. Did you wire us you were com- 
ing?” 

“Not that, exactly. You see, it was like 
this, Mr. Hammond: when Jim didn’t get 
back the day he was due the adjutant sent 
you a wire, and when he didn’t get an 
answer he sent another — and when you 
didn’t reply to that he detailed me to come 
along and see what was wrong.” 

The storekeeper stared at him. “I never 
got any telegram. Jim came home on two 
weeks’ furlough, and he has five days of it 
left. You and your adjutant must be 
crazy.” 

“Two weeks,” repeated Peter. “It was 
six days he got.” 


42 


JIM HAMMOND 

‘^Six days! Are you sure of that, Peter 
Starkley?” 

“As sure as that’s my name, Mr. Ham^ 
mond. And the adjutant sent you two 
telegrams, asking why Jim didn’t return to 
duty when his pass was up — and he didn’t 
get any answer. If you didn’t get one or 
other of those telegrams, then there is some- 
thing wrong somewhere.” 

Mr. Hammond’s face clouded. “I didn’t 
get any wire, Peter — and Jim went away 
day before yesterday, to visit some friends,” 
he said. 

They eyed each other in silence for a 
little while ; both were bitterly embarrassed, 
and the storekeeper was numbed with 
shame. 

“I’ll go for him,” he said. “If I fetch 
him to you here, will you promise to — to 
keep the truth of it quiet, Peter — from his 
43 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

mother and sister and the folk about here?’’ 

do the best I can,” promised the 
corporal, “but not for Jim’s sake, mind you, 
Mr. Hammond. Capt. Long is for giving 
him a chance because of his brother, Pat, 
over on Salisbury Plain — and that’s why he 
sent me alone, instead of sending a sergeant 
with an escort.” 

“I’ll go fetch him, Peter,” said the other, 
in a shaking voice. “You go along to 
Beaver Dam and come back to-morrow — to 
see Vivia. When Jim and I turn up you 
meet him just like it was by chance. Keep 
your mouth shut, Peter. Not a word to a 
living soul about his only having six days. 
He’s not well, and that’s the truth.” 

A dull anger was awake in Peter by this 
time. 

“Something the matter with his feet,” he 
said and left the store. 

44 


JIM HAMMOND 

Here he was, told to be tactful by Capt. 
I-(Ong and to keep his mouth shut by Mr. 
Hammond, all on account of a sulky, lazy, 
bad-tempered fellow who had been a dis- 
grace to the battalion since the day he 
joined it. And not a word about stopping 
for dinner! 

He crossed the road to the hotel, made 
arrangements to be driven out to Beaver 
Dam and then ate a lonely dinner. He 
thought of Vivia Hammond only a few 
yards away from him, yet unconscious of 
his proximity — and he wanted to punch the 
head of her brother Jim. He drove away 
from the hotel up the long hill without ven- 
turing a glance at the windows of the big 
white house on the other side of the road. 

The family at Beaver Dam accepted his 
visit without question. No mention was 
made of Jim Hammond that night. Peter 
45 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

was up and out early the next morning, lend- 
ing a hand with the feeding and milk- 
ing. 

After breakfast he and Dick went over 
to his own place to have a look at his house 
and barns. 

‘‘Frank Sacobie came home last week,’’ 
said Dick. “He’s been out to see us twice. 
He wants to enlist in your outfit, but I am 
trying to hold him off till next year so’s we 
can go over together.” 

“You babies had better keep your bibs on 
a few years longer,” said Peter. “I guess 
there will be lots of time for all of you to 
fight in this war without forcing yourselves 
under glass.” 

They rounded a spur of spruces and saw 
Sacobie approaching on snowshoes across 
the white meadows. He had grown taller 
and deeper in the chest since Peter had last 


46 


JIM HAMMOND 


seen him. The greeting was cordial but not 
wordy. Sacobie turned and accompanied 
them. 

“I see Jim Hammond yesterday, out Pike 
Settlement way,” he said. 

‘‘That so?” returned Peter, trying to 
seem uninterested. 

“No uniform on, neither, and drinkin’ 
some,” continued Sacobie. “Says he’s got 
his discharge from that outfit because it 
ain’t reckoned as first-class and has 
been asked to be an ofScer in another out- 
fit.” 

Then Peter forgot his instructions. Jim 
Hammond too good for the 26th battalion! 
Jim Hammond offered a commission! His 
indignant heart sent his blood racing 
through him. 

“He’s a liar!” he cried. “Yes, and a de- 
serter, too, by thunder!” 

4Y 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

Dick was astonished, but Frank Sacobie 
received the information calmly, without so 
much as a flicker of the eyelids. 

think that all the time I listen to him,” 
he said. Agger to get his job, anyway, 
if he lie or tell the truth. I go down to- 
morrow, Peter, and you tell the colonel 
how I make a darn sight better soldier than 
Jim Hammond.” 

Peter gripped the others each by an 
arm. 

‘‘I shouldn’t have said that,” he cautioned 
them. ‘‘Forget it! You boys have got to 
keep it under your hats, but I guess it’s up 
to me to take a jog out Pike Settlement way. 
If you boys say a word about it, you get in 
wrong with me and you get me in wrong 
with a whole heap of folks.” 

They turned and went back to Beaver 
Dam. There they hitched the mares to the 
48 


JIM HAMMOND 

big red pung and stowed in their blankets 
and half a bag of oats. 

can’t tell you where I’m going or 
what for, but only that it is a military duty,” 
said Peter in answer to the questions of the 
family. 

He took Dick and Frank Sacobie with 
him. Once they got beyond the outskirts of 
the home settlement they found heavy sled- 
ding. At noon they halted, blanketed and 
baited the mares, boiled the kettle and 
lunched. The wide, white roadway before 
them, winding between walls of green-black 
spruces and gray maples, was marked with 
only the tracks of one pair of horses and one 
pair of sled runners — evidently made the 
day before. Peter guessed them to be those 
of Mr. Hammond’s team, but he said noth- 
ing about that to his companions. 

Here and there they passed drifted clear- 
49 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

ings and little houses sending blue feathers 
of smoke into the bright air. They came to 
places where the team that had passed the 
previous day had been stuck in the drifts and 
laboriously dug out. 

They were within two miles of the settle- 
ment, between heavy woods fronted with 
tangled alders, when the cracking whang! 
of exploding cordite sounded in the under- 
brush. The mares plunged, then stood. 
The reins slipped from Peter’s mittened 
hands. 

“Ikn hit, boys!” he said and then sagged 
over across Dick’s knees. 

They laid him on hay and horse blankets 
in the bottom of the pung and covered him 
with fur robes. Then Sacobie got up in 
front and drove. 

No sound except the rapping of a wood- 
pecker came from the woods. Peter 


60 



I M HIT, BOYS !’ HE SAID. 





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■1 


JIM HAMMOND 

breathed regularly. Presently he opened 
his eyes. 

“It’s in the ribs, by the feel of it — but 
it doesn’t hurt much,” he said. “Felt 
like a kick from a horse at first. Remem- 
ber not to say anything about Jim Ham- 
mond.” 

They put him to bed at the first farm- 
house they reached. All his clothing on 
the right side was stiff with blood. Dick 
bandaged the wound; and a doctor arrived 
two hours later. The bullet had nipped 
in and out, splintering a rib, and lay just 
beneath the skin. Peter had bled a good 
deal, but not to a dangerous extent. 

Before sunrise the next morning Dick 
and Frank Sacobie set out on their return 
journey, taking with them a brief telegram 
and a letter for Capt. Long. Peter had 
dictated the message, but had written the 
51 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

letter with great effort, one wavery word 
after another. 

Mr. Hammond and John Starkley 
reached Pike Settlement late at night. The 
storekeeper seemed broken in spirit, but 
some color came back to his face when he 
saw Peter lying there in the bed at the farm- 
house with as cheerful an air as if he had 
only strained his ankle. 

must see you a few minutes alone be- 
fore I leave,” he whispered, stooping over 
the bed. 

^^Don’t worry,” answered Peter. 

John Starkley was vastly relieved to find 
his son doing so well. His bewilderment 
that any one in that country should pull a 
trigger on Peter almost swamped his indig- 
nation. The more he thought it over the 
more bewildered he became. 

‘‘You haven’t an enemy in the world, 
52 


JIM HAMMOND 

Peter — except the Germans/’ he said. “But 
that was no -chance shot. If it had been an 
accident, the fellow with the rifle would 
have come out to lend a hand.” 

“I guess that’s so,” replied Peter. 
“Maybe it was a German. It means a lot 
to the Kaiser to keep me out of this war.” 

His father smiled. “Joking aside, lad,” 
he said, “who do you suppose it was? 
What was the bullet? Many a murderer 
has been traced before now on a less likely 
clue than a bullet.” 

“Isn’t the bullet on the table there, Mr. 
Hammond? The doctor gave it to me, and 
I chucked it somewhere — over there or 
somewhere.” 

They looked in vain for the bullet. Later, 
when the guests and the household were at 
supper, Mr. Hammond excused himself 
from table and ran up to Peter’s room. 


53 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

He closed the door behind him, leaned 
over the bed and grasped Peter’s left hand 
in both of his. 

did my best,” he whispered. “I 
found him and told him you had been sent 
because the officer wanted to give him a 
chance. But he had been drinking heavy. 
He wasn’t himself, Peter — he was like a 
madman. I begged him to come back with 
me, but he wouldn’t hear reason or kind- 
ness. He knocked me down — me, his own 
father — and got away from that house. 
What are you going to do, Peter? You 
are a man, Starkley — a big man — big 
enough to be merciful. What d’you mean 
to do?” 

“Nothing,” said Peter. “I came to find 
Jim, and I haven’t found him. I got shot 
instead by some one I haven’t seen hair, 
hide or track of. It’s up to the army to 
54 


JIM HAMMOND 

find Jim, if they still want him; but as far 
as I am concerned he may be back with the 
battalion this minute for all I know. I 
hope he is. As for the fellow who made a 
target of me, well, he didn’t kill me, and I 
don’t hold a grudge against him.” 

Mr. Hammond went home the first thing 
in the morning. John Starkley waited un- 
til the doctor called again and dressed the 
wound and said he had never seen any one 
take a splintered rib and a hole in the side 
so well as Peter. 

“If he keeps on like this, you’ll be able 
to take him home in ten days or so,” said 
the doctor. 

So John Starkley returned to Beaver 
Dam, delivered the good news to his family 
and heard in return that young Frank 
Sacobie had gone to St. John and joined the 
26th. 


55 


CHAPTER III 


THE VETERANS OF OTHER DAYS 

W HEN Peter was able to travel, 
he was taken home to Beaver 
Dam, and there a medical 
officer, a major in spurs, examined him and 
congratulated him on being alive. Peter 
was given six months’ sick leave ; and that,, 
he knew, killed his chance of crossing the 
ocean with his battalion. He protested, 
but the officer told him that, whether in 
bed in his father’s house or with his platoon, 
he was still in the army and would have to 
do as he was told. The officer said it 
kindly and added that as soon as he was 
fit he should return to his battalion, whether 
it was in Canada, England or Flanders. 

Jim Hammond vanished. The army 
marked him as a deserter, and even his own 


56 


VETERANS OF OTHER DAYS 


battalion forgot him. Confused rumors 
circulated round his home village for a 
little while and then faded and expired. 
As Jim Hammond vanished from the 
knowledge and thought of men, so vanished 
the mysterious rifleman who had splintered 
Peter’s rib. 

Spring brought the great news of the 
stand of the First Canadian Division at 
Ypres — the stand of the few against the 
many, of the Canadian militia against the 
greatest and most ruthless fighting machine 
of the whole world. The German army 
was big and ready, but it was not great as 
we know greatness now. The little Bel- 
gians had already checked it and pierced 
the joints of its armor; the French had 
beaten it against odds; the little old army 
of England, with its monocles and its tea 
and its pouter-chested sergeant majors, had 
5f 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

outshot it and outfought it at every meeting; 
and now three brigades of Canadian in- 
fantry and a few batteries of Canadian ar- 
tillery had stood undaunted before its del- 
uge of metal and strangling gas and held 
it back from the open road to Calais and 
Paris. 

Lieut. Pat Hammond wrote home about 
the battle. He had been in the edge of it 
and had escaped unhurt. Henry Stark- 
ley, of the First Field Company, was there, 
too. He received a slight wound. Pri- 
vate letters and the great stories of the 
newspapers thrilled the hearts of thousands 
of peaceful, unheroic folk. Volunteers 
flowed in from lumber camps and farms. 

In May Dick Starkley made the great 
move of his young life. He was now seven- 
teen years old and sound and strong. He 
saw that Peter could not get away with his 
58 


VETERANS OF OTHER DAYS 


battalion — that, unless something unex- 
pected happened, the Second Canadian Di- 
vision would get away without a Starkley of 
Beaver Dam. 

So he did the unexpected thing: he went 
away to St. John without a word, introduced* 
himself to Sgt. Dave Hammer as Peter’s 
brother, added a year to his age and became 
a member of the 26th Battalion. He found 
Frank Sacobie there, already possessed of 
all the airs of an old soldier. 

Dick sent a telegram to his father and a 
long, affectionate, confused letter to his 
mother. His parents understood and for- 
gave and went to St. John and told him so 
— and Peter sent word that he, too, under- 
stood ; and Dick was happy. Then with all 
his thought and energy and ambition he set 
to work to make himself a good soldier. 

Peter did not grumble again about his 
59 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

sick leave. His wound healed; and as the 
warm days advanced he grew stronger with 
every day. He had been wounded in the 
performance of his duty as surely as if a 
German had fired the shot across the mud 
of No Man’s Land; so he accepted those 
extra months in the place and life he loved 
with a gratitude that was none the less deep 
for being silent. 

In June the Battalion embarked for Eng- 
land, in strength eleven hundred noncom- 
missioned officers and men and forty-two 
officers. Afte'r an uneventful voyage of 
eleven days they reached Devenport, in 
England, on the twenty-fourth day of the 
month. The three other battalions of the 
brigade had reached England a month be- 
fore; the 26th joined them at the training 
camps in Kent and immediately set to work 
to learn the science of modern warfare. 

60 ' 


VETERANS OF OTHER DAYS 

They toiled day and night with vigor and 
constancy; and before fall the battalion was 
declared efficient for service at the front. 

Both Dick Starkley and Frank Sacobie 
throve on the hard work. The musketry 
tests proved Sacobie to be one of the best 
five marksmen in the battalion. Dick was 
a good shot, too, but fell far below his friend 
at the longer ranges. In drill, bombing 
and physical training, Dick showed himself 
a more apt pupil than the Malecite. At 
trench digging and route marching there 
was nothing to choose between them, in 
spite of the fact that Sacobie had the ad- 
vantage of a few inches in length of leg. 
Both were good soldiers, popular with their 
comrades and trusted by their officers. 
Both were in Dave Hammer’s section and 
Mr. Scammell’s platoon. 

One afternoon in August Henry Stark- 


61 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

ley turned up at Westenhanger, on seven 
days’ leave from France. He looked years 
older than when Dick had last seen him and 
thinner of face, and on his left breast was 
stitched the ribbon of the military cross. 
He obtained a pass for Dick and took him 
up to London. They put up at a quiet hotel 
off the Strand, at which Henry had stopped 
on his frequent week-end visits to town from 
Salisbury Plain. As they were engaged in 
filling in the complicated and exhaustive 
registration form the hall porter gave Henry 
three letters and told him that a gentle- 
man had called several times to see him. 

“What name?” asked Henry. 

“That he didn’t tell me, sir,” replied the 
porter, “but as it was him wrote the letters 
you have in your hand you’ll soon know, 
sir.” 

Henry opened one of the envelopes and 
62 


VETERANS OF OTHER DAYS 


turned the inclosure over in quest of the 
writer’s signature. There it was — A. 
Starkley-Davenport. All three letters were 
from the same hand, penned at dates 
several weeks apart. They said that be- 
fore her marriage the writer’s mother had 
been a Miss Mary Starkley, daughter of a 
London merchant by the name of Richard 
Starkley. Richard Starkley, a colonial by 
birth with trade connections with the West 
Indies, had come from Beaver Dam in the 
province of New Brunswick. The letters 
said further that their writer had read in 
the casualty lists the name of Lieut. Henry 
Starkley of the Canadian Engineers, and 
that after diligent inquiry he had learned 
that this same officer had registered at the 
Canadian High Commissioner’s office in 
October, 1914, and given his London address 
as the Tudor Hotel. Failing to obtain any 
63 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

further information concerning Henry 
Starkley, the writer had kept a constant eye 
on the Tudor Hotel. He begged Mr. 
Henry Starkley to ring up Mayfair 2607, 
without loss of time, should any one of 
these letters ever come to his hand. 

‘What’s his hurry, I wonder?” remarked 
Henry. “After three generations without a 
word I guess he’ll have to wait until to-mor- 
row morning to hear from the Starkleys 
of Beaver Dam.” 

“Why not let him wait for three more 
generations?” suggested Dick. “His grand- 
father, that London merchant, soon forgot 
about the people back in the woods at 
Beaver Dam. Since the second battle of 
Ypres, this lad with the hitched-up-double 
name wants to be seen round with you, 
Henry.” 

“If that’s all, he does not want much,” 
64 


VETERANS OF OTHER DAYS 


said Henry. ^ We’ll take a look at him, 
anyway. Don’t forget that the first Stark- 
ley of Beaver Dam was once an English 
soldier and that there was a first battle of 
Ypres before there was a second.” 

The brothers, the lieutenant of engineers 
and the infantry private, had dinner at a 
restaurant where there were shaded candles 
and music; then they went to a theater. 
Although the war was now only a year old, 
London had already grown accustomed to 
the “gentleman ranker.” Brothers, cousins 
and even sons of officers in the little old 
army were now private soldiers and non- 
commissioned officers in the big new army. 
The uniform was the great thing. Rank 
badges denoted differences of degree, not 
of kind. So Lieut. Henry Starkley and 
Private Dick Starkley, together at their 
little luxurious table for two and later el- 
65 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

bow to elbow at the theater, did not cause 
comment. Immediately after breakfast the 
next morning Henry rang up the Mayfair 
number. A voice of inquiring deference, 
a voice that suggested great circumspection 
and extreme polish, answered him. Henry 
asked for Mr. Starkley-Davenport. 

‘‘You want the captain, sir,” corrected 
the voice. “Mr. David was killed at 
Ypres in ’14. What name, sir?” 

“Starkley,” replied Henry. 

“Of Canada, sir? Of Beaver Dam? 
Here is the captain, sir.” 

Another voice sounded in Henry’s ear, 
asking whether it was Henry Starkley of the 
sappers on the other end of the line. 
Henry replied in the affirmative. 

“It is Jack Davenport speaking — Stark- 
ley-Davenport,” continued the voice. 
“Glad you have my letters at last. Are 
66 


VETERANS OF OTHER DAYS 


you at the same hotel? Can you wait there 
half an hour for me?” 

“I’ll wait,” said Henry. 

He and Dick awaited the arrival of the 
grandson of Richard Starkley with lively 
curiosity. That he was a captain, and that 
some one connected with him, perhaps a 
brother, had been killed at Ypres in 1914, 
added considerable interest to him in their 
eyes. 

“Size him up before trying any of your 
old-soldier airs on him, young fellow,” 
warned Henry. 

They sat in the lounge of the hotel and 
kept a sharp watch on everyone who entered 
by the revolving doors. It was a quiet 
place, as hotels go in London, but during the 
half hour of their watching more people 
than the entire population of Beaver Dam 
were presented to their scrutiny. At last 
67 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 


a pale young fellow in a Panama hat and 
a gray-flannel suit entered. Under his left 
shoulder was a crutch and in his right hand 
a big, rubber-shod stick. His left knee 
was bent, and his left foot swung clear of 
the ground. His hands were gloved in 
gray, and he wore a smoke-blue flower in 
his buttonhole. Only his necktie was out 
of tone with the rest of his equipment: it 
was in stripes of blue and red and yellow. 
Behind him, close to his elbow, came a thin, 
elderly man who was dressed in black. 

‘‘Lieut. Starkley?” he inquired of the 
hall porter. 

At that Henry and Dick both sprang to 
their feet and went across to the man in 
gray. Before they could introduce them- 
selves the young stranger edged himself 
against his elderly companion, thus mak- 
ing a prop of him, hooked the crook of his 
68 


VETERANS OF OTHER DAYS 


stick into a side pocket of his coat, and ex- 
tended his right hand to Henry. He did 
it all so swiftly and smoothly that it almost 
escaped notice; and, pitiful as it was, it 
almost escaped pity. 

“Will you lunch with me — if you have 
nothing better to do?” he asked. “You’re 
on leave, I know, and it sounds cheek to 
ask — ^but I want to talk to you about some- 
thing rather important.” 

“Of course — and here is my young 
brother,” said Henry. 

The captain shook hands with Dick and 
then stared at him. 

“You are only a boy,” he said; and then, 
seeing the blood mount to Dick’s tanned 
cheeks, he continued, “and all the better 
for that, perhaps. The nippiest man in 
my platoon was only nineteen.” 

“Of course you remember, sir, Mr. David 
69 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

had not attained his twentieth birthday,” 
the elderly man in black reminded him. 

^‘You are right, Wilson,” said the cap- 
tain. ‘^Hit in October, ’14. He was my 
young brother. There were just the two of 
us. Shall we toddle along? I kept my 
taxi.” 

Capt. J. A. Starkley-Davenport occupied 
three rooms and a bath in his own house, 
which was a big one in a desirable part of 
town. The remaining rooms were occu- 
pied by his servants. And such servants! 

The cook was so poor a performer that 
whenever the captain had guests for lunch- 
eon or dinner she sent out to a big hotel 
near by for the more important dishes — 
but her husband had been killed in Flanders, 
and her three sons were still in the field. 
Wilson, who had been Jack’s father’s color 
sergeant in South Africa, was the valet. 

70 


VETERANS OF OTHER DAYS 


The butler was a one-armed man of forty- 
five years who had served as a company 
sergeant major in the early days of the war; 
in rallying half a dozen survivors of his 
company he had got his arm in the way of 
a chunk of high-explosive shell and had 
decorated his chest with the Distinguished 
Conduct Medal. He had only the vaguest 
notions what his duties as butler required 
of him but occupied his time in arguing the 
delicate question of seniority with Wilson 
and the coachman and making frequent 
reports to the captain. 

The coachman, who had served forty 
years in the navy, most of the time as chief 
petty officer, claimed seniority of the butler 
and Wilson on the grounds of belonging 
to the senior service. But the ex-sergeants 
argued that the captain’s house was as much 
a bit of the army as brigade headquarters 
71 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

in France, and that the polite thing for any 
sailorman to do who found a home there 
was to forget all about seniority; and that 
for their part they did not believe the Brit- 
ish navy was older than the British army. 

Captain Starkley-Davenport introduced 
into this household his cousins from Beaver 
Dam, without apologies and with only a 
few words of explanation. In spite of the 
butler’s protests, the valet and the coach- 
man intruded themselves on the luncheon 
party, pretending to wait on table, but in 
reality satisfying their curiosity concern- 
ing the military gentlemen from Canada 
whose name was the front half of the cap- 
tain’s name. They paused frequently in 
their light duties round the table and 
frankly gave ear to the conversation. Their 
glances went from face to face with childish 
eagerness, intent on each speaker in turn. 

72 


VETERANS OF OTHER DAYS 


The captain did not mind, for he was ac- 
customed to their ways and their devour- 
ing interest in him; Henry was puzzled at 
first and then amused; and Dick was highly 
flattered. 

“There isn’t anyone of our blood in our 
regiment now, and that is what I particu- 
larly want to talk to you chaps about,” 
said the captain, after a little talk on gen- 
eral subjects. “My father and young 
brother are gone, and the chances are that 
I won’t get back. But the interests of the 
regiment are still mine — and I want the 
family to continue to have a stake in it. 
No use asking you to transfer, Henry, I 
can see that; you are a sapper and already 
proved in the field, and I know how sap- 
pers feel about their job; but Dick’s an 
infantryman. What d’you say to transfer 
and promotion, Dick? You can get your 
73 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

commission in one of our new battalions as 
easy as kiss. It will help you and the old 
regiment.’’ 

^‘But perhaps I shouldn’t make a good 
officer,” replied Dick. “I’ve never been 
in action, you know.” 

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll answer for 
your quality. You wouldn’t have enlisted 
if the right stuff wasn’t in you.” 

“But I’d like to prove it, first — although 
I’d like to be an officer mighty well. That’s 
what I intend to be some day. I think I’ll 
stick to the 26th a while. That would be 
fairer — and I’d feel better satisfied, if ever 
I won a commission, to have it in my own 
outfit. Frank Sacobie would feel sore if I 
left him, before we’d ever been in France 
together, to be an officer in another outfit. 
But there is Peter. He is a corporal al- 
ready and a mighty good soldier.” 

74 


VETERANS OF OTHER DAYS 


He told all about Peter and the queer 
way he was wounded back in Canada and 
then all about his friend, Frank Sacobie. 
The captain and the three attendants 
listened with interest. The captain asked 
many questions; and the butler, the valet 
and the coachman were on the point of do- 
ing the same many times. 

After luncheon Wilson, the elderly valet, 
took command gently but firmly and led 
the captain off to bed. The brothers left 
the addresses of themselves and Peter with 
the captain and promised to call at every 
opportunity and to bring Sacobie to see him 
at the first chance. 

Dick and Frank Sacobie continued their 
training, and in July Dick got his first 
stripe. A few members of the battalion 
went to the hospital, and a few were re- 
turned to Canada for one reason or another. 

75 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

In August a little draft of men fresh from 
Canada came to the battalion. 

One of the new men kept inquiring so 
persistently for Corp. Peter Starkley that 
in the course of time he was passed along 
to Dick, who told him about Peter. 

“I’m downright sorry to hear that,” said 
the new arrival. “I saw him in Mr. Ham- 
mond’s store one day and took a shine to 
him, but as you’re his own brother I guess 
I’m in the right outfit. Hiram Sill is my 
name.” 

They shook hands cordially. 

“I’m an American citizen and not so 
young as I used to be,” continued Sill, “but 
the minute this war started I knew I’d be 
into it before long. Soldiering is a busi- 
ness now, and I am a business man. So 
it looked to me as if I were needed — as if 
the energy I was expending in selling boots 
76 


VETERANS OF OTHER DAYS 


and shoes for Maddock & Co. would count 
some if turned against the Kaiser. So I 
swore an oath to fight King George’s ene- 
mies, and I guess I’ve made no mistake in 
that. King George and Hiram Sill see 
eye to eye and tooth to tooth in this war 
like two coons at a watermelon.” 

In spite of the fact that Mr. Scammell’s 
platoon was already up to strength, Sill 
worked his way into it. 

He had a very good reason for wanting 
to be in that particular platoon, and there 
were men already in it who had no particu- 
lar reason for remaining in it instead of 
going to some other platoon; so — as Sill 
very justly remarked to Dick, to Sacobie, to 
Sergt. Hammer, to Lieut. Scammell and to 
Capt. Long — he did not see why he could 
not be where he wanted to be. Friendship 
for Frank Sacobie and Dick Starkley and 
77 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

admiration for Sergt. Hammer and Lieut. 
Scammell were the reasons he gave for 
wanting to be in that platoon. 

“He seems a friendly chap,’^ said the 
adjutant to Mr. Scammell. “Will you 
take him? If so, you can let the Smith 
with the red head go over to Number 
Three, where he will be with a whole grist 
of lads from his own part of the country. 
What d’ye say? He looks smart and will- 
ing to me.” 

“Sure ril take him,” said Mr. Scammell. 
“He says he admires me.” 

So Hiram Sill became a member of 
Number Two Platoon. He worked with 
the energy of a tiger and with the good 
nature of a lamb. He talked a great deal, 
but always with a view to acquiring or im- 
parting knowledge. When he found that 
his military duties and the cultivation of 
78 


VETERANS OF OTHER DAYS 


friendships did not use up all his time and 
energy, he set himself to the task of ascer- 
taining how many Americans were enrolled 
in the First and Second Canadian divisions. 
Then indeed he became a busy man; and 
still his cry continued to be that soldiering 
was a business. 


79 


CHAPTER IV 


PRIVATE SILL ACTS 

O N the night of September 15, 1915, 
the brigade of which the 26th Bat- 
talion was a unit crossed from 
Folkstone to Boulogne without accident. 
All the ranks were in the highest spirits, 
fondly imagining that the dull routine of 
training w^as dead forever and that the prac- 
tice of actual warfare was as entertaining 
as dangerous. 

The brigade moved up by way of the 
fine old city of Saint Omer and the big 
Flemish town of Hazebrouck. By the 
fourth day after landing in France the 
whole brigade was established in the for- 
ward area of operations, along with the 
other brigades of the new division. On 
the night of the 19th the battalion marched 
80 


PRIVATE SILL ACTS 

up and went into hutments and billets close 
behind the Kemmel front. That night, 
from the hill above their huts, the men from 
New Brunswick beheld for the first time 
that fixed, fire-pulsing line beyond which 
lay the menace of Germany. 

The battalion went in under cover of 
darkness, and by midnight had taken over 
from the former defenders the headquarters 
of companies, the dugouts in the support 
trenches and the sentry posts in the fire 
trench. There were Dick Starkley and his 
comrades holding back the Huns from the 
throat of civilization. It was an amazing 
and inspiring position to be in for the first 
time. In front of them, just beneath and 
behind the soaring and falling star shells 
and Very lights, crouched the most ruthless 
and powerful armies of the world. 

To the right and left, every now and 
81 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

then, machine guns broke forth in swift, 
rapping fire. When the fire was from the 
positions opposite, the bullets snapped in the 
air like the crackings of a whip. The 
white stars went up and down- Great guns 
thumped occasionally; now and then a high 
shell whined overhead; now and then the 
burst of an exploding shell sounded before 
or behind. It was a quiet night; but to the 
new battalion it was full of thrills. The 
sentries never took their eyes from the mys- 
terious region beyond their wire. Every 
blob of blackness beyond their defenses set 
their pulses racing and sent their hands to 
their weapons. 

Dick Starkley and Frank Sacobie stood 
shoulder to shoulder on the fire step for 
hours, staring with all their eyes and listen- 
ing with all their ears. Hiram Sill sat at 
their feet and talked about how he felt on 
82 


PRIVATE SILL ACTS 

this very particular occasion. His friends 
paid no attention to him. 

^‘This is the proudest moment of my life,” 
he said. ‘We are historic figures, boys — 
and that’s a thing I never hoped to be. In 
my humble way, I stand for more than 
George Washington did. This is a bigger 
war than George ever dreamed of, and I 
have a bigger and better reason for fight- 
ing the Huns than Gen. Washington ever 
had for fighting the fool Britishers.” 

“Did you see that?” asked Dick of Sac- 
obie. “Over in the edge of their wire. 
There! Look quick now! Is it a man?” 

“Looks like a man, but it’s been there 
right along and ain’t moved yet,” said 
Frank. “Maybe it’s a stump.” 

Just then Lieut. Scammell came along. 
He got up on the fire step and, directed by 
Dick, trained his glass on the black thing 
83 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

in the edge of the enemy’s wire. A German 
^ star shell gave him light. 

“That’s a German — a dead one,” he said. 
“I’ve been told about him. There was a 
bit of a scrap over there three nights ago, 
and that is one of the scrappers.” 

Hiram forgot about Gen. Washington 
and mounted the fire step to have a look. 
He bprrowed the officer’s glass for the pur- 
pose. 

“Do his friends intend to leave him out 
there much longer, sir?” he asked. “If 
they do, it’s a sure sign of weakness. 
They’re scart.” 

“They are scart, right enpugh — but I 
bet they wouldn’t be if they knew this bit 
of trench was being held now by a green 
battalion,” replied Mr. Scammell. “They’d 
be over for identifications if they knew.” 
“Let them come!” exclaimed Private 


84 


PRIVATE SILL ACTS 

Sill. bet a dollar they wouldn’t stay to 
breakfast — except a few who wouldn’t want 
any.” 

At that moment a rifle cracked to the 
right of them, evidently from their own 
trench and not more than one hundred yards 
away. It was followed close by a spatter 
of shots, then the smashing bursts of gre- 
nades, more musketry and the rat-tat-tat of 
several machine guns. Bullets snapped in 
the air. Lights trailed up from both lines. 
Dull thumps sounded far away, and then 
came the whining songs of high-flying 
shells. Flashes of fire astonished the eye, 
and crashing reports stunned the ear. 

“They’re at us!” exclaimed the lieutenant. 
“Open fire on the parapet opposite, unless 
you see a better target, and don’t leave 
your posts. Keep low. Better use the 
loopholes.” 


85 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

He left the fire step and ran along the 
duck boards toward the heart of the row. 

Dick and Frank Sacobie and Hiram 
Sill, firing rapidly through the loopholes, 
added what they could to the disturbance. 
Now and again a bullet rang against the 
steel plate of a loophole. One or another 
of them took frequent observations through 
a periscope, for at that time the Canadian 
troops were not yet supplied with shrapnel 
helmets. Dave Hammer, breathless with 
excitement, joined them for a few seconds. 

“They tried to jump us, — must have 
learned we’re a green relief, — but we’ve 
chewed them up for fair!” he gasped. 
“Must have been near a hundred of ’em — 
but not one got through our wire. Keep 
yer heads down for a while, boys; they’re 
traversing our top with emmagees.” 

At last the enemy’s artillery fire slack- 
86 


PRIVATE SILL ACTS 

ened and died. Ours drubbed away cheer- 
ily for another fifteen minutes, then ceased 
as quick and clean as the snap of a finger. 
The rifle fire and machine-gun fire dwin- 
dled and ceased. Even the up-spurting of 
the white and watchful stars diminished by 
half ; but now and again one of them from 
the hostile lines, curving far forward in its 
downward flight, illuminated a dozen or 
more motionless black shapes in and in front 
of our rusty wire. Except for those motion- 
less figures No Man’s Land was again de- 
serted. The big rats ran there undisturbed. 

Sacobie looked over the parapet; Hiram 
Sill and Dick sat on the fire step at the 
Malecite’s feet. They felt as tired as if 
they had been wrestling with strong men 
for half an hour. Dave Hammer came 
along the trench and halted before them. 

‘Those Huns or Fritzes or whatever you 
87 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

call them are crazy,’’ he said. “Did you 
ever hear of such a fool thing as that? 
They’ve left a dozen dead out in front, be- 
sides what they carried home along with 
their wounded — and all they did to us was 
wound three of our fellows with that first 
bomb they threw, and two more with 
machine-gun fire.” 

“Their officers must be boneheads, for ^ 
sure,” said Hiram. “War’s a business, — 
and a mighty swift one, — and you can’t suc- 
ceed in business without knowing some- 
thing about psychology. Yes, gentlemen, 
psychology, queer as it may sound.” 

“Sounds mighty queer to me!” muttered 
Sacobie, glancing down. 

“You must study men,” continued Priv- 
ate Sill, not at all abashed, “their souls and 
hearts and minds — if you want to make a 
success at anything except bee farming. 

88 


PRIVATE SILL ACTS 

Now, take this fool raid of the Huns. They 
were smart enough to find out that a bunch 
of greenhorns took over this trench to-night. 
So they thought they’d surprise us. Now, 
if they’d known anything about psychology, 
they’d have known that just because we 
were new and green we’d all be on our 
toes to-night, with our eyes sticking out a 
yard and our ears buttoned right back. 
Sure! Every man of us was on sentry duty 
to-night!” 

“I guess you’ve got the right idea. Old 
Psychology,” said the sergeant. 

The 26th spent five days in the line on 
that tour. With the exception of one day 
and night of rain they had fine weather. 
They mended their wire and did a fair 
amount of business in No Man’s Land. 
The enemy attempted no further raids; his 
last effort had evidently given him more in- 
89 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

formation concerning the quality of the 
new battalion than he could digest in 
a week. At any rate he kept very 
quiet. 

At the end of the tour the battalion went 
back a little way to huts on the bushy flanks 
of Scherpenberg, where they “rested’’ by 
performing squad, platoon and company 
drill and innumerable fatigues. The time 
remaining at their disposal was devoted to 
football and base-ball and investigations of 
villages and farmsteads in the neighbor- 
hood. 

Their second tour in was more lively and 
less comfortable than the first. Under the 
drench of rain and the gnawing of dank 
and chilly mists their trenches and all the 
surrounding landscape were changed from 
dry earth to mud. Everything in the front 
line, including their persons, became caked 


90 


PRIVATE SILL ACTS 

with mud. The duck boards became a 
chain of slippery traps; and in low trenches 
they floated like rafts. The parapets slid 
in and required constant attention ; and what 
the water left undone in the way of destruc- 
tion the guns across the way tried to fin- 
ish. 

It was hard on the spirit of new troops; 
they were toughened to severe work and 
rough living, but not to the deadening mud 
of a front-line trench in low ground. So 
their officers planned excitement for them, 
to keep the fire of interest alive in their 
hearts. That excitement was obtained in 
several ways, but always by a move of some 
sort against the enemy or his defenses. 
Patrol work was the most popular form of 
relief from muddy inaction. Lieut. Scam- 
mell quickly developed a skill in that and 
an appetite for it that soon drew the colo- 
91 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 


nel’s attention to himself and his followers. 

By the end of September, even the med- 
ical officers of New Brunswick had to ad- 
mit that Corp. Peter Starkley was fully re- 
covered from his wound. As for Peter him- 
self, he affirmed that he had not felt any- 
thing of it for the past two months. He had 
worked at the haying and the harvesting on 
Beaver Dam and his own place without 
so much as a twinge of pain. 

Peter returned to his military duties 
eagerly, but inspired only by his sense of 
duty. His heart was more than ever in his 
own countryside; but despite his natural 
modesty he knew that he was useful to his 
king and country as a noncommissioned 
officer, and with that knowledge he fortified 
his heart. He tried to tell Vivia Hammond 
something of what he felt. His words 
92 


PRIVATE SILL ACTS 

were stumbling and inadequate, but she 
understood him. And at the last he said: 

‘‘Vivia, don’t forget me, for I shall be 
thinking of you always — ^more than of any- 
one or anything in the world.” And then, 
not trusting his voice for more, he kissed 
her hastily 

Vivia wept and made no attempt to hide 
her tears or the reason for them. 

Shortly before Peter’s return to the army 
he had received a letter from Capt. Stark- 
ley-Davenport, telling of the reunion of 
the cousins in London and virtually offer- 
ing him a commission in the writer’s old 
regiment. Peter had also heard some- 
thing of the plan from Dick a few days be- 
fore. He answered the captain’s letter 
promptly and frankly, to the effect that he 
had no military ambition beyond that of 
doing his duty to the full extent of his 
93 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

power against Germany, and that a com- 
mission in an English regiment was an 
honor he could accept only if it should 
come to him unavoidably, in the day’s 
work. 

Peter reached England in the third week 
of October and with three hundred com- 
panions fresh from Canada was attached to 
a reserve battalion on St. Martin’s Plain 
for duty and instruction. Peter was given 
the acting rank of sergeant. Early in 
December he crossed to France and reached 
his battalion without accident. He found 
that the 26th had experienced its full share 
of the fortunes and misfortunes of war. 
Scores of familiar faces were gone. His 
old platoon had suffered many changes 
since he had left it in St. John a year ago. 
Its commander, a Lieut. Smith, was an en- 
tire stranger to him, and he had known the 
94 


PRIVATE SILL ACTS 

platoon sergeant as a private. Mr. Scam- 
mell was now scout officer and expecting 
his third star at any moment. Dave Ham- 
mer, still a sergeant, and Dick, Sacobie and 
Hiram Sill also were scouts. Dick, was a 
corporal now and had never been touched 
by shot, shell or sickness. Sacobie had been 
slightly wounded and had been away at a 
field ambulance for a week. 

Peter rejoined his old platoon and, as it 
was largely composed at this time of new 
troops, was permitted to retain his acting 
rank of sergeant. He performed his du- 
ties so satisfactorily that he was con- 
firmed in his rank after his first tour in 
the trenches. 

On the third night of Peter’s second tour 
in the front line, Dave Hammer, Dick and 
Frank Sacobie took him out to show him 
about. All carried bombs, and Sergt. 


95 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

Hammer had a pistol as well. They were 
hoping to surprise a party of Germans at 
work mending their wire. 

Hammer slipped over the parapet. Peter 
followed him. Dick and Sacobie went 
over together, quick as the wink of an eye. 
Their faces and hands were black. With 
Dave Hammer in the lead, Peter at the 
very soles of his spiked boots and Dick and 
Sacobie elbow to elbow behind Peter, they 
crawled out through their own wire by the 
way of an intricate channel. When a star 
shell went up in front, near enough to light 
that particular area, they lay motionless. 
They went forward during the brief periods 
of darkness and half light. 

At last they got near enough to the Ger- 
man wire to see it plainly, and the leader 
changed his course to the left. When they 
lay perfectly still they could hear many 
96 


PRIVATE SILL ACTS 

faint, vague sounds in every direction: far, 
dull thuds before and be*hind them, spatters 
of rifle fire far off to the right and left, the 
bang of a Very pistol somewhere behind 
a parapet and now and then the crash of 
a bursting shell. 

A few minutes later Dave twisted about 
and laid a hand on Peter’s shoulder. He 
gave it a gentle pull. Peter crawled up 
abreast of him. Dave put his lips to Peter’s 
ear and whispered: 

^^There they are.” 

A twisty movement of his right foot had 
already signaled the same information to 
the veterans in the rear. Peter stared at 
the blotches of darkness that Dave had in- 
dicated. They did not move often or 
quickly and kept close to the ground. 
Sometimes, when a light was up, they be- 
came motionless and instantly melted from 
97 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 


view, merging into the shadows of the night 
and the tangled wire. Now and then Peter 
heard some faint sound of their labor, as 
they worked at the wire. 

^^Only five of them,” whispered the scout 
sergeant. ^‘They are scared blue. Bet 
their skunks of officers had to kick them 
out of the trench. Let’s sheer off a few 
yards and give ’em something to be scared 
about.” 

Just then Dick and Frank squirmed up 
beside them. 

‘‘Some more straight ahead of us,” 
breathed the Indian. “Three or four.” 

Hammer used his glass and saw that Sa- 
cobie’s eyes had not fooled him. He 
touched each of his companions to assure 
himself of their attention, then twisted sharp 
to the left, back toward their own line, and 
crawled away. They followed. After he 
98 


PRIVATE SILL ACTS 

had covered about ten yards, Dave turned 
end for end in his muddy trail, and the 
others came up to him and turned beside 
him. They saw that the wiring party and 
the patrol had joined. 

“Spread a bit,” whispered Dave. “I’ll 
chuck one at ’em, and when it busts you 
fellows let fly and then beat it back for the 
hole in our wire. Take cover if the em- 
magees get busy. I’ll be right behind 
you.” 

They moved a few paces to the right and 
left. Peter’s lips felt dry, and he wanted 
to sneeze. He took a plump, cold, heavy 
little grenade in his muddy right hand. A 
few breathless, slow seconds passed and 
then smash! went Dave’s bomb over against 
the Hun wire. Then Peter stood up and 
threw — and three bombs exploded like one. 

Turning, Peter slithered along on all 
99 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 


fours after Dick and Sacobie. The startled 
Huns lighted up their front as if for a 
national fete ; but Peter chanced it and kept 
on going. A shrapnel shell exploded over- 
head with a terrific sound, and the fat bul- 
lets spattered in the mud all round him. 
He came to another and larger crater and 
was about to skirt it when a familiar voice 
exclaimed : 

^‘Come in here, you -idiot!” 

There was Dick and Frank Sacobie 
standing hip-deep in the mud and water at 
the bottom of the hole. Peter joined them 
with a few bushels of mud. A whiz-bang 
whizzed and banged red near-by, and 
the three ducked and knocked their 
heads together. The water was bitterly 
cold. 

‘^Did you think you were on your way 
to the barns to milk?” asked Dick. ^^Don’t 
100 


PRIVATE SILL ACTS 

you know the machine guns are combing 
the ground?” 

“I’ll remember,” said Peter. “New 
work to me, and I guess I was a bit flus- 
tered. I wonder where Dave Hammer has 
got himself to.” 

“Some hole or other, sure,” said Sacobie. 
“Don’t worry ’bout Dave. He put three 
bombs into them. I counted the busts. 
Fritz will quiet down in a few minutes, I 
guess, and let us out of here — if our fellows 
don’t get gay and start all the artillery 
shootin’ off.” 

Our fellows did not get gay, our artillery 
refrained from shooting off, and soon the 
enemy ceased his frenzied musketry and 
machine gunning and bombing of his own 
wire and the harmless mud beyond. So 
Peter and Dick and Sacobie left their wet 
retreat and crawled for home. They found 


101 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

Sergt. Hammer waiting for them at the hole 
in the wire. He had already given the 
word to the sentry; and so they made the 
passage of the wire and popped into the 
trench. Hammer reported to Mr. Scam- 
mell, who was all ready to go out with an- 
other patrol; and then the four went back 
to their dugout in the support trench, de- 
voured a mess of potatoes and onions, drank 
a few mugs of tea and retired to their blan- 
kets, mud and putties and all. 

That was the night of the 3d of Decem- 
ber. In the battalion’s summary of 
intelligence to the brigade it read like 
this: 

^‘Night of 23d-24th, our patrols active. 
Small patrol of four, under 106254 Sgt. D. 
Hammer, encountered ten of the enemy in 
front of the German wire. Bombs were 
exchanged and six of the enemy were killed 
102 


PRIVATE SILL ACTS 

or wounded. Our patrol returned. 2.30 
A. M. Lieut. Scammell placed tube in hostile 
wire which exploded successfully. No 
casualties.” 

The next day passed quietly, with a pale 
glimmer of sunshine now and then, and be- 
tween glimmers a flurry of moist snow. 
The Germans shouted friendly messages 
across No Man’s Land and suggested a com- 
plete cessation of hostilities for the day and 
the morrow. The Canadians replied that 
the next Fritz who cut any ‘^love-your-en- 
emy” capers on the parapet would get what 
'he deserved. 

^Teace on earth!” exclaimed the colonel 
of the 26th. ^They are the people to ask 
for it, the murderers! No, this is a war 
with a reason — and we shoot on Christ- 
mas Eve just as quick as on any other 
day.” 


103 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

The day passed quietly. Soon after sun- 
set Mr. Scammell sent two of his scouts 
out to watch the gap in the German wire 
that he had blown with his explosive tube. 
They returned at ten o’clock and reported 
that the enemy had made no attempt to 
mend the gap. The night was misty and 
the enemy’s illumination a little above nor- 
mal. 

At eleven o’clock Lieut. Scammell went 
out himself, accompanied by Lieut. Harvey 
and nine men. They reached the gap in 
the enemy wire without being discovered, 
and there they separated. Mr. Harvey and 
two others moved along the front of the 
wire to the left, and a sergeant and one man 
went to the right. Mr. Scammell and his 
five men passed through the wire and ex- 
tended a few yards to the left, close under 
the hostile parapet. 


104 


PRIVATE SILL ACTS 

The officer stood up, close against the 
wet sandbags. Dave Hammer, Dick, Pe- 
ter, Hiram Sill and Sacobie followed his 
example. 

Then, all together, they tossed six bombs 
into the trench. The shattering bangs of 
six more blended with the bangs of the 
first volley. From right and left along the 
trench sounded other explosions. 

Obeying their officer’s instructions, 
Scammell’s men made the return journey 
through the wire and struck out for home 
at top speed, trusting to the mist to hide 
their movements from the foe. 

Scammell rid himself of three more 
bombs and then followed his party. The 
white mist swallowed them. The bombers 
ran, stumbled and ran again, eager to reach 
the shelter of their own parapet before the 
shaken enemy should recover and begin 
105 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

sweeping the ground with his machine 
guns. 

Sacobie and Dick were the first to get in- 
to the trench. Then came Sergt. Hammer 
and Lieut. Scammell, followed close by 
Lieut. Harvey and his party. By that 
time the German machine guns were going 
full blast. 

“Are Sergt. Starkley and Private Sill 
here?” 

“Don’t see either of ’em, sir,” Sergt. 
Hammer said in reply to Mr. Scammell’s 
question. 

“Perhaps they got here before any of us 
and beat it for their dugout,” said Mr. 
Scammell. “Dick, you go along the trench 
and have a look for them. If they aren’t 
in, come back and report to me. Wait 
right here for me, mind you — on this side 
of the parapet. Get that?” 


106 


PRIVATE SILL ACTS 

Then the officer spoke a few hurried 
words to Sergt. Hammer, a few to the sen- 
try, and went over the sandbags like a snake. 
Hammer went out of the trench at the same 
moment; and Frank Sacobie took one 
glance at the sentry and followed Hammer 
like a shadow. The mist lay close and 
cold and almost as wet as rain over that 
puddled waste. 

Mr. Scammell found Peter and Hiram 
about ten yards in front of the gap in our 
wire; the private was unhurt and the ser- 
geant unconscious. Sill had his tall friend 
on his back and was crawling laboriously 
homeward. 

^‘Whiz-bang,” he informed Mr. Scam- 
mell. ^Tt got Pete bad, in the leg. I heard 
him grunt and soon found him.” 

They regained the trench, picking up 
Hammer on the way, and sent Peter out on 
107 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

a stretcher. Sacobie came in at their heels ; 
and no one knew that he had gone out to 
the rescue. 

That happened on Christmas morning. 
Before night the doctors cut off what little 
had been left below the knee of Peter’s right 
leg. 


108 


CHAPTER V 

PETER'S ROOM IS AGAIN OCCUPIED 

L ife was very dull round Beaver 
Dam after Peter had gone away. 
John and Constance Starkley and 
Flora and Emma felt that every room of 
the old house was so full of memories of 
the three boys that they could not think of 
anything else. John Starkley worked early 
and late, but a sense of numbness was al- 
ways at his heart. There were times when 
he glowed with pride and even when he 
flamed with anger, but he was always con- 
scious of the weight on his heart. His 
grief was partly for his wife’s grief. 

He awoke suddenly very early one morn- 
ing and heard his wife sobbing quietly. 
109 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

That had happened several times before, 
and sometimes she had been asleep and at 
other times awake. Now she was asleep, 
lonely for her boys even in her dreams. 
He thought of waking her; and then he re- 
flected that, if awake, she would hide her 
tears, which now perhaps were giving her 
some comfort in her dreams. 

But he could not find his own sleep again. 
He lighted a candle, put on a few clothes 
and went downstairs to the sitting room. 
There were books everywhere, of all sorts, 
in that comfortable and shabby room. The 
brown wooden clock on the shelf above the 
old Franklin stove ticked drearily. It 
marked ten minutes past two. Mr. Stark- 
ley dipped into a volume of Charles Lever 
and wondered why he had ever laughed at 
its impossible anecdotes and pasteboard love 
scenes. He tried a report of the New 
110 


PETER^S ROOM 

Brunswick Agricultural Society and found 
that equally dry. A flyleaf of Treasure Is- 
land held his attention, for on it was penned 
in a round hand, ^‘Flora with Dick’s love, 
Christmas, 1914.” 

^‘He was only a boy then,” murmured 
the father. ^^Less than a year ago he was 
only a boy, and now he is a man, knowing 
hate and horror and fatigue — a man fight- 
ing for his life. They are all boys ! Henry 
and Peter — Peter with his grand farm and 
fast mares, and his eyes like Connie’s.” 

John Starkley got out of his chair, trem- 
bling as if with cold. He walked round 
the room, clasping his hands before him. 
Then he took the candle from the table and 
held it up to the shelf above the stove. 
There stood photographs of his boys, in 
uniform. He held the little flame close to 
each photograph in turn. 

Ill 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

^Three sons/’ he said. ^Three good sons 
— and not one here now!” 

A cautious rat-tat on the glass of one of 
the windows brought him out of his rever- 
ies with a start. He went to the window 
without a moment’s hesitation, held the 
candle high and saw a face looking in at 
him that he did not recognize for a mo- 
ment. It was a frightened and shamed 
face. The eyes met his for a fraction 
of a second and then shifted their 
glance. 

“James Hammond!” exclaimed Mr. 
Starkley. “Of all people!” 

He set the candle on the table and pushed 
up the lower sash of the window, letting in 
a gust of cold wind that extinguished the 
light behind him. He could see the bulk 
of his untimely visitor against the vague 
starlight. 


112 


PETER^S ROOM 

^^Come in, James,” he said. the 

window or the door, as you like.” 

^^Thank you, Mr- Starkley,” said Ham- 
mond in guarded tones. “The window 
will do. No strangers about, I suppose? 
Just the family?” 

“Only my wife and daughters,” replied 
the farmer, and turned to relight the can- 
dle. 

Jim Hammond got quickly across the 
sill, pulled the sash down, and after it the 
green-linen shade. He stood near the wall, 
twirling his hat in his hand and shuffling 
his feet. When Mr. Starkley turned to 
him, he swallowed hard, glanced up and 
then as swiftly down again. 

“Queer time to make a call,” said Ham- 
mond at last. “Near three o’clock, Mr. 
Starkley. I was glad to see your light at 
the window. I was scared to tap on the 


113 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 


window, at first, for fear you’d send me 
away.” 

‘‘Send you away?” queried the farmer. 
“Why did you fear that, Jim? You, or any 
other friend, are welcome at this house at 
any hour of the day or night. But I must 
admit that your visit has taken me by sur- 
prise. I thought you were far away from 
this peaceful and lonely country, my boy — 
far away in Flanders.” 

The blood flushed over Jim’s face, and 
he stared at the farmer. 

“You thought I was in Flanders,” he said. 
“In Flanders — me! So you don’t know 
about me, Mr. Starkley? Peter didn’t 
tell you about me? That — that’s impos- 
sible. Don’t you know — and every one 
else?” 

“I don’t know what you are talking 
about,” replied Mr. Starkley, as he pushed 
114 


PETER^S ROOM 

Jim into an armchair. can see that you 
are tired, however, and in distress of some 
sort. Why are you here, Jim — and why 
are you not in uniform? Tell me — and if 
I can help you in any way you may be sure 
that I will. Rest here and Fll get you 
something to eat. I did not notice at first 
how bad you look, Jim.’’ 

‘^Never mind the food!” muttered young 
Hammond. ^T’m not hungry, sir — not to 
matter, that. is. But I’m dog-tired. I’ve 
been hiding about in the woods and in peo- 
ple’s barns for a long time — and walking 
miles and miles. I — you say you don’t 
know — I am a deserter — and worse.” 

“You didn’t go to Prance with your regi- 
ment? You deserted?” 

“I didn’t go anywhere with it. Why 
didn’t Peter tell you? I came home on 
pass — and gave them the slip. I — Peter 
115 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

was sent here to fetch me back. And he 
didn’t tell you! And you thought I was in 
France!* I came here because I was 
ashamed to go home.” 

He suddenly leaned forward in his chair, 
with his elbows on his knees, and covered 
his face with his hands. His shoulders 
shook. John Starkley continued to gaze at 
him in silence for a minute or two, far too 
amazed and upset and bewildered to know 
what to say or do. He felt a great pity for 
the young man, whom he had always known 
as a prosperous and self-confident person. 
To see him thus — shabby, weary, ashamed 
and reduced to tears — was a most pitiful 
thing. A deserter! A coward! But even 
so, who was he to judge? Might not his 
sons have been like this, except for the 
mercy of God? Even now any one of his 
boys, or all three of them, might be in great 
116 


PETER^S ROOM 

need of help and kindness. He went over 
and laid a hand gently on his visitor’s 
shoulder. 

‘‘I don’t know what you have done, 
exactly, or anything at all of your reason 
for doing it, but you are the son of a friend 
of mine and have been a comrade of one of 
my sons,” he said. ^‘Look upon me as a 
friend, Jim. You say you are a deserter. 
Well, I heard you. It is bad — but here is 
my hand.” 

Jim Hammond raised his head and looked 
at Mr. Starkley with a tear-stained face. 

“Do you mean that?” he asked; and at 
the other’s nod he grasped the extended 
hand. 

Mr. Starkley asked him no more ques- 
tions then, but brought cold ham from the 
pantry and cider from the cellar and ate 
and drank with him. The visitor’s way 
117 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

with the food and drink told its own story 
and sharpened the farmer’s pity. They 
went upstairs on tiptoe. 

^‘This is Peter’s room,” said Mr. Stark- 
ley. “Sleep sound and as long as you 
please — till dinner time, if you like. And 
don’t worry, Jim.” 

The farmer returned to his own room 
and found his wife sleeping quietly. He 
wakened her and told her of young Ham- 
mond’s visit and all that he knew of his 
story. 

“I am glad you took him in,” she said. 
“We must help him for our boys’ sakes, 
even if he is a deserter.” 

“Yes,” answered Mr. Starkley, “we must 
help him through his shame and trouble — 
and then he may right the other matter of 
his own free will. We’ll give him a chance, 
anyway.” 


118 


PETER’S ROOM 


It was dinner time when Jim Hammond 
awoke from his sleep of physical and ner- 
vous exhaustion. He was puzzled to know 
where he was at first, but the memory of 
the night’s adventure came to him, bring- 
ing both shame and relief. He had no 
watch to tell him the time, and there was 
no clock in the room. He had brought 
nothing with him — not a watch, or a dol- 
lar, or a shirt — nothing except his guilt and 
his shame. He flinched at the thought 
of meeting Mrs. Starkley and the 
girls. 

A knock sounded on the door, and John 
Starkley looked in and wished him good 
morning. ‘^If you get up now, Jim, you’ll 
be in time for dinner,” he said. ‘^Here is 
hot water and a shaving kit — and a few 
duds of Henry’s and Peter’s you can use if 
119 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

you care to. Set your mind at rest about 
the family, Jim. I have told my wife all 
that I know myself, and she feels as I do. 
As for the girls — well, I will let them know 
as much as is necessary. We mean 
to help you to get on your feet again, 
Jim.” 

The deserter shaved with care, dressed 
in his own seedy garments and went slowly 
downstairs. He entered the kitchen. Mrs. 
Starkley and Flora were there, busy about 
the midday dinner. They looked up at him 
and smiled as he appeared in the doorway, 
but their eyes and Flora’s quick change of 
color told him of the quality of their pity. 
They would feel the same, he knew, for any 
broken and drunken tramp in the ditch. 
But he was a more despicable thing than 
a drunken tramp. He was a deserter, a 
coward. They knew that of him, for he 
120 


PETER’S ROOM 


saw it in their eyes that tried to be so frank 
and kind; and that was not the worst of 
him. He could not advance from the 
threshold or meet their glances again. 

Mrs. Starkley went to the young man 
quickly and, taking his hand in hers, drew 
him into the room. Flora came forward 
and gave him her hand and said she was 
glad to see him; and then Emma came in 
from the dining room and said, “Hello, Mr. 
Hammond! I hope you can stay here a 
long time ; we are very lonely.” 

His heart was so shaken by those words 
that his tongue was suddenly loosened. 
He looked desperately, imploringly round, 
and his face went red as fire and then white 
as paper. 

“Fll stay — if you’ll let me— until I pick 
up my nerve again,” he said quickly and 
unsteadily. “Keep me hidden here from 
121 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

Stanley and my folks. Til work like a nig- 
ger. I am a deserter, as you all know — and 
I know that Peter didn’t tell you so. I’d 
do anything for him, after that. I’m a 
runaway soldier, but it wasn’t because I 
was afraid to fight. I’ll show you as soon 
as I’m fit — I’ll go and fight. It was my 
beastly temper and drink that did for me. 
I’ve been near crazy since. But I’ll show 
you my gratitude some day — if you give me 
a chance now to work round to feeling some- 
thing like a man again.” 

Flora and Emma were tongue-tied by 
the stress of their emotions. They could 
only gaze at their guest with tear-dimmed 
eyes. But Mrs. Starkley went close to him 
and put a hand on each of his drooped 
shoulders. 

*‘Of course, my dear boy,” she said. 
“You are only a boy, Jim, a year or two 
122 


PETER^S ROOM 


younger than Henry, I think. Trust us to 
help you.” 

During dinner they talked about the 
country, the war, the weather and the stock 
— about almost everything but Jim Ham- 
mond’s affairs. 

^‘What do you want me to do this after- 
noon?” asked Jim when the meal was over. 

don’t know much about farm work, but 
I can use an axe and can handle horses.” 

“I was ploughing this morning; and this 
may be our last day before the frost sets in 
hard,” said Mr. Starkley. ^‘What about 
hitching Peter’s mares to a second plow?” 

“Suit me fine,” said Jim. 

It was a still, bright October afternoon, 
with a glow in the sunshine, a smell of fern 
and leaf in the air and a veil of blue mist on 
the farther hills. Frosts had nipped the 
surface of things lightly a score of times 
123 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

but had not yet struck deep. Jim Ham- 
mond, in a pair of Peter’s long-legged boots, 
guided a long plough behind Peter’s black 
and sorrel mares. The mares pulled stead- 
ily, and the bright plough cut smoothly 
through the sod of the old meadow. Ovei 
against the fir woods on the far side of the 
meadow John Starkley went back and forth 
behind his grays. 

Jim rested frequently at the end of a fur- 
row, for he was not in the pink of condi- 
tion. He noticed, for the first time in his 
life, the faint perfume of the turned loam 
and torn grass roots. He liked it. His 
furrows, a little uneven at first, became 
straighter and more even until they were 
soon almost perfect. 

As the red sun was sinking toward the 
western forests, Emma appeared, climbing 
over the rail fence from a grove of young 
124 


PETER^S ROOM 

red maples. She carried something under 
one arm. She waved a hand to her father 
but came straight to Jim. He stopped the 
mares midway the furrow. 

‘‘I made these gingernuts myself,” said 
Emma, holding out an uncovered tin box 
to him. “See, they are still hot. Have 
some.” 

He accepted two and found them very 
good. The girl looked over his work ad- 
miringly and told him she had never seen 
straighter furrows except a few of Peter’s 
ploughing. Then she warned him that in 
half an hour she would blow a horn for 
him to stop and went across to her father 
with what was left of the gingernuts. 
Hammond went on unwinding the old sod 
into straight furrows until the horn blew 
from the house. 

After supper he played cribbage with Mr. 

125 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

Starkley; and that night he slept soundly 
and without dreaming. He awoke early 
enough to do his share of the feeding and 
milking before breakfast. The ploughs 
worked again that day, but the next night 
brought a frost that held tight. 

The days went by peacefully for Jim . 
Hammond. He never went on the high- 
way or away from Beaver Dam and Peter’s 
place. Sometimes, when people came to 
the house, he sat by himself in his room 
upstairs. He did his share of all the barn 
work, twice a week helped Mrs. Starkley 
and the girls with the churning and cut 
cordwood and fence rails every day. He 
never talked much, but at times his manner 
was almost cheerful. And so the days 
passed and October ran into November. 
Snow came and letters from France and 
England. The family treated him like one 
126 


PETER’S ROOM 


of themselves, with never a question to em- 
barrass him or a word to hurt him. He 
heard news of his family occasionally, but 
never tried to see them. 

^^They think I am somewhere in the 
States, hiding — or that’s what father 
thinks,” he said to Flora. ^‘Some day I’ll 
write to mother — from France.” 

December came and Christmas. Jim 
kept house that day while the others drove 
to Stanley and attended the Christmas ser- 
vice in the church on the top of the long 
hill. A week later a man in a coonskin 
coat drove up to the kitchen door. Jim 
recognized him through the window as the 
postmaster of Stanley and retired up the 
back stairs. John Starkley, who had 
just come in from the barns, opened the 
door. 

‘‘A cablegram for you, Mr. Starkley,” 
127 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

said the postmaster. “It] was wired 
through from Fredericton.” 

He held out the thin; envelope. Mr. 
Starkley stared at it, but did not move. 
His eyes narrowed, and his face looked 
suddenly old. 

“No call to be afraid of it,” said the 
postmaster, who was also the telegraph 
operator. “I received it and know what’s 
in it.” 

Mr. Starkley took it then and tore it 
open. 

“Peter wounded. Doing fine. Dick 
Starkley” is what he read. He sighed with 
relief and called to Mrs. Starkley and the 
girls. Then he invited the man from Stan- 
ley in to dinner, saying he would see to the 
horse in a minute. 

“You can’t expect much better news than 
that from men in France,” John Starkley 
128 


PETER^S ROOM 

said to his Wife. ‘Wounded and doing 
fine — why, that’s better than no news, by a 
long shot. He will be safe out of the line 
now for weeks, perhaps for months. Per- 
haps he will even get to England. He is 
safe at this very minute, anyway.” 

He excused himself, went upstairs and 
told Jim Hammond the news. 

“That is twice for Peter already,” he 
said, “once right at home and once in 
Flanders. If this one isn’t any worse than 
the first, we have nothing to worry about.” 

“I hope it is just bad enough to give him 
a good long rest,” said Jim in a low voice. 

The postmaster stayed to dinner, and 
Emma smuggled roast beef and pudding up 
to Jim in his bedroom. No sooner had 
that visitor gone than another drove up. 
This other was Vivia Hammond; and once 
more Jim retired to his room. Vivia had 
129 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

heard of the cablegram, but nothing of its 
import. Her face was white with anxiety. 

^‘What is it?” she cried. ^‘The cable — 
what is it about?” 

‘Teter is right as rain — wounded but do- 
ing fine,” said John. 

Vivia cried and then laughed. 

love Peter, and I don’t care who knows 
it!” she exclaimed. “I hope he has lost 
a leg, so they’ll have to send him home. 
That sounds dreadful — but I love him so — 
and what does a leg matter?” She turned 
to Mrs. Starkley. “Did he ever tell you 
he loved me?” she asked. 

“He didn’t have to tell us,” answered 
Mrs. Starkley, smiling. 

“He does! He does!” exclaimed the 
girl, and then began to cry again; and Jim, 
imprisoned upstairs, wished she would go 
home. 


130 


CHAPTER VI 

DAVE HAMMER GETS HIS COMMISSION 

B y the middle of January, 1916, Peter 
was in London again, now minus 
one leg but otherwise in the pink of 
condition. Davenport, with his crutch and 
stick and shadowing valet, visited him daily 
in hospital. He and Peter wrote letters to 
Beaver Dam — and Peter wrote a dozen to 
Stanley. 

Capt. Starkley-Davenport had power. 
Warbroken and propped between his crutch 
and stick, still he was powerful. A spirit 
big enough to animate three strong men 
glowed in his weak body, and he went after 
the medical officers, nursing sisters and 
V. A. D.’s of that hospital like a lieutenant 
general looking for trouble. He saw that 
131 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

Peter received every attention, and then that 
every other man in the hospital received the 
same — and yet he was as polite as your 
maiden aunt. Several medical officers, in- 
cluding a colonel, jumped on him — figura- 
tively speaking — only to jump back again 
as if they had landed on spikes. 

As soon as he regarded Peter as fit to be 
moved he took him to his own house. There 
the queer servants waited on Peter day and 
night in order of seniority. They addressed 
him as ^^Sergt. Peter, sir.” 

Over in Flanders things had bumped and 
smashed along much as usual since Christ- 
mas morning. Mr. Scammell had read his 
promotion in orders and the London Ga- 
zette, had put up his third star and had 
gone to brigade as staff captain. Intelli- 
gence; and David Hammer, with the act- 
ing rank of sergeant major, carried on in 
132 


DAVE HAMMER 


command of the battalion scouts. Hiram 
Sill had been awarded the Distinguished 
Conduct Medal for his work on Christmas 
morning and the two chevrons of a corp- 
oral for his work in general. A proud man 
was Corp. Sill, with that ribbon on his 
chest. 

The changes and chances of war had 
also touched Dick Starkley and Frank Sac- 
obie. Lieut. Smith had persuaded Dick to 
leave the scouts and become his platoon ser- 
geant; Sacobie was made an acting ser- 
geant — and the night of that very day, while 
he was displaying his new chevrons in No 
Man’s Land, he received a wound in the 
neck that put him out of the line for two 
weeks. 

Henry Starkley — a captain now — man- 
aged to visit the battalion about twice a 
month. It was in the fire trench that he 
133 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

found Dick one mild and sunny morning 
of the last week of February. The brothers 
grinned affectionately and shook hands. 

^Teter has sailed for home, wooden leg 
and all,” said Henry. ‘‘I got a letter yester- 
day from Jack Davenport. Except for the 
sneaking Hun submarines, Peter is fairly 
safe now.” 

hope he makes the farm,” said Dick. 
‘‘He was homesick for it every minute and 
working out crop rotations on the backs of 
letters every night, in the line and out — ex- 
cept when he was fighting.” 

“There was something about you in Jack’s 
letter. He says that offer still stands, and 
he seems as anxious as ever about it.” 

Dick sat down on the fire step, thrust out 
his muddy feet on the duck boards and 
gazed at them. He scratched himself 
meditatively in several places. 

134 


DAVE HAMMER 


“Pd like fine to be an officer,” he said 
at last. “Almost any one would. But I 
don’t want to leave this bunch just now. 
Jack’s crowd will want officers in six months 
just as much as now — maybe more; and if 
I’m lucky — still in fighting shape six months 
from now — I’ll be better able to handle 
the job.” 

“I’ll write that to Jack,” said Henry. 
“He will understand — and your platoon 
commander will be pleased. He and the 
adjutant talked to me to-day as if something 
were coming to you — a D. C. M., I think. 
What happened to your first adjutant, Capt. 
Long, by the way?” 

“Long’s gone west,” replied Dick briefly. 

“I’m sorry to hear that. Shell get 
him?” 

“No, sniper. He took one chance too 


many. 


135 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

“I heard at the brigade on my way in that 
your friend, Dave Hammer, has his com- 
mission. I wonder if they have told him 
yet.” 

“Good! Let’s go along and tell him. 
He is sleeping to-day.” 

They found Dave in his little dugout, 
with the mud of last ntght’s expedition 
still caked on his person from heel to head. 
His blankets were cast aside, and he lay 
flat on his back and snored. His snores had 
evidently driven the proprietors of the 
other bunks out of that confined place, for 
he was alone. His muddy hands clasped 
and unclasped. He ceased his snoring sud- 
denly and gabbled something very quickly 
and thickly in which only the word “wire” 
was recognizable. Then he jerked up one 
leg almost to his chin and shot it straight 
again with terrific force. 


136 


DAVE HAMMER 


^‘He is fighting in his dreams, just the 
way my old dog Snap used to,’^ said Dick. 
“We may as well wake him up, for he isn’t 
resting.” 

^^Go to it — and welcome,” said Henry. 
“It’s an infantry job.” 

Dick stooped and cried, “Hello, Dave!” 
but the sleeper only twitched an arm. 
“Wake up!” roared Dick. “Wake up and 
go to sleep right!” The sleeper closed his 
mouth for a second but did not open his 
eyes. He groaned, muttered something 
about too much light and began to snore 
again. Dick put a hand on his shoulder — 
and in the same breath of time he was 
gripped at wrist and throat with fingers 
like iron. Grasping the hand at his throat, 
Dick pulled a couple of fingers clear. 
Then the sleeper closed his mouth again and 
opened his eyes wide. 

137 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

“Oh, it’s you, Dick!” he said. “Sorry. 
Must have been dreaming.” 

He sat up and shook hands with Henry. 
When he heard of his promotion he blushed 
and got out of his bunk. 

“That’s a bit of cheering news,” he said 
“I’ll have a wash on the strength of that, 
and something to eat. Wish we were out, 
and I’d give a little party. Wonder if I 
can raise a set of stars to wear to-night, 
just for luck.” 

Henry went away half an hour later, and 
Dick returned to the fire trench. Capt. 
Keen, the adjutant, came looking for Ham- 
mer, found him still at his toilet and 
congratulated him heartily on his promo- 
tion. 

“Come along and feed with me, if you 
have had enough sleep,” said the adjutant. 
“The colonel wants to see you. He had a 
138 


DAVE HAMMER 


talk with you yesterday, didn’t he — about 
to-night’s job?” 

‘^Yes, sir; and it will be a fine job, if the 
weather is just right. Looks now as if it 
might be too clear, but we’ll know by sun- 
down. I was dreaming about it a while 
ago. We were in, and I had a big sentry 
by the neck when Dick Starkley woke me 
up. I had grabbed Dick.” 

^^The colonel is right,” said Capt. Keen. 
^‘You’re working too hard, Hammer, and 
you’re beginning to show it; your eyes look 
like the mischief. This fighting in your 
sleep is a bad sign.” 

^‘The whole army could do with a rest, 
for that matter,” replied Hammer, ^‘but 
who would go on with the work? What 
I am worrying about now is rank 
badges. I’d like to doll up a bit for to- 
night.” 


139 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 


They went back to the sandbagged cellar 
under the broken farmhouse that served 
as headquarters for whatever battalion held 
that part of the line. On their way they 
had borrowed an old jacket with two stars 
on each sleeve from Lieut. Smith; and in 
that garment Dave Hammer appeared at 
the midday meal. The colonel, the medi- 
cal officer, the padre and the quartermaster 
were there. They congratulated Dave on 
his promotion, and the colonel placed him 
at his right hand at the table on an upended 
biscuit box. 

The fare consisted of roast beef and 
boiled potatoes, a serviceable apple pie and 
coffee. The conversation was of a general 
character until after the attack on the pie — 
an attack that was driven to complete suc- 
cess only by the padre, who prided himself 
on the muscular development of his jaws. 

140 


DAVE HAMMER 


The commanding officer, somewhat daunted 
in spirit by the pastry, looked closely at the 
lieutenant. 

^‘You need a rest. Hammer,” he said. 
‘‘Keen, didn’t I tell you yesterday that 
Hammer must take a rest? Doc, just slant 
an eye at this young officer and give me 
your opinion. Doesn’t he look like all-get- 
out?” 

“Looks like get-out-of-the-front-line to 
me, sir,” said the medical officer. “A 
couple of weeks back would set him on 
his feet. You say the word, sir, and I’ll 
send him back this very day.” 

“But the show!” exclaimed Hammer. 
“I must go out .to-night, sir!” 

“Hammer is the only officer with his 
party, sir,” said Capt. Keen to the colonel. 
“As you know, sir, we held the organiza- 
tion down this time to only one officer with 


141 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 


each of our four parties — because offi- 
cers are not very plentiful with us just 
now.” 

^‘That’s the trouble!” exclaimed the colo- 
nel. ^‘They hem and haw and chew the 
rag over our recommendations for comis- 
sions and keep sending us green officers 
from England who don’t know the fine 
points of the game. So here we are forced 
to let Hammer go out to-night, when he 
should be in his blankets. But back he 
goes to-morrow!” 

Dave had intended to sleep that after- 
noon, but the excitement caused by the news 
of his promotion made it impossible. He 
who had never missed a minute’s slumber 
through fear of death was set fluttering at 
heart and nerves by the two worsted “pips” 
on each sleeve of his borrowed jacket. 
The coat was borrowed — but the right to 


142 


DAVE HAMMER 


wear the stars was his, his very own, earned 
in Flanders. He toured the trenches — fire, 
communication and support — feeling that 
his stars were as big as pie plates. 

Sentries, whose bayonet-tipped rifles 
leaned against the parapet, saluted and 
then grasped his hand. Subalterns and 
captains hailed him as a brother; and so 
did sergeants, with a ^^sir” or two thrown 
in. As Dave passed on his embarrassed 
but triumphant way down the trench his 
heart pounded as no peril of war had ever 
set it pounding. No emperor had ever 
known greater ache and uplift of glory than 
this grand conflagration in the heart and 
brain of Lieut. David Hammer, Canadian 
Infantry. 

He visited his scouts; and they seemed as 
pleased at his ^^pips” as if each one of them 
had got leave to London. Even Sergt. 

143 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

Frank Sacobie’s dark and calm visage 
showed flickers of emotion. Corp. Hiram 
Sill, D. C. M., who visioned everything in 
a large and glowing style, saw in his mind’s 
eye the King in Buckingham Palace agree- 
ing with some mighty general, all red and 
gold and ribbons, that this heroic and de- 
serving young man should certainly be 
granted a commission for the fine work he 
was doing with the distinguished scouts of 
that very fine regiment. 

“I haven’t a doubt that was the way of 
it,” said Old Psychology. ‘Teople with 
jobs like that are trained from infancy to 
grasp details; and I bet King George has 
the name of everyone of us on the tip of his 
tongue. You can bet your hat he isn’t one 
to give away Distinguished Conduct Med- 
als without knowing what he is about.” 

Hiram joined in the laughter that fol- 
144 


DAVE HAMMER 


lowed his inspiring statements ; not that he 
thought he had said anything to laugh at, 
but merely to be sociable. 

That ‘^show” was to be a big one — a bri- 
gade affair with artillery cooperation. The 
battalion on the right was to send out two 
parties, one to bomb the opposite trench 
and the other to capture and demolish a 
hostile sap head — and together to raise Old 
Ned in general and so hold as much of the 
enemy’s attention as possible from the main 
event. The battalion on the left was to 
put on an exhibition of rifle, machine-gun 
and trench-mortar fire that would assuredly 
keep the garrison opposite occupied with 
its own affairs. 

As for the artillery, it had already worked 
through two thirds of its elaborate pro- 
gramme. Four nights ago it had put on a 
shoot at two points in the hostile wire and 
145 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

front line, three hundred yards apart, short 
but hot. Then it had lifted to the support 
and reserve trenches. Three nights ago it 
had done much the same things, but not at 
the same hours, and on a wider frontage. 
The enemy, sure of being raided, had 
turned on his lights and his machine guns 
on both occasions — on nothing. He could 
do nothing then toward repairing his wire, 
for after our guns had churned up his en- 
tanglements our machine guns played upon 
the scene and kept him behind his parapet. 
The batteries had been quiet two nights ago, 
and Fritz, expecting a raid in force, had 
lost his nerve entirely. Our eighteen 
pounders had lashed him at noon the next 
day, and again at sunset and again at eleven 
o’clock; and so he had sat up all night 
again with his nerves. 

At four o’clock in the afternoon of this 
146 


DAVE HAMMER 


day of Dave Hammer’s promotion the bat- 
teries went at it again, smashing wire and 
parapets with field guns and shooting up 
registered targets farther back with heavier 
metal. When hostile batteries retaliated, 
we did counter-battery work with such 
energy and skill that we soon had the 
last word in the argument. The deeds 
of the gunners put the infantry in high 
spirits. 

The afternoon grew misty; shortly after 
five o’clock there was a shower. At half 
past seven scouts went out from the 26th 
and the battalion on the right and, return- 
ing, reported that the wire was nicely ripped 
and chewed. At eight the battalion on the 
left put on a formidable trench-mortar 
shoot, which quite upset the nerve-torn 
enemy. Then all was at rest on that par- 
ticular piece of the western front — except 
147 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

for the German illumination — until half 
past twelve. 

Half past twelve was Zero Hour. A 
misty rain was seeping down from a slate- 
gray sky. Six lieutenants in the fire trench 
of two battalions took their eyes from the 
dials of their wrist watches, said “time” to 
their sergeants and went over, with their 
men at their heels and elbows. The two 
larger parties from our battalion were to 
get into the opposite trench side by side, 
there separate one to the left and one to the 
right, do what they could in seven minutes 
or until recalled, then get out and run for 
home with their casualties — if any. They 
were to pass their prisoners out as they col- 
lared them. The smaller parties were 
made up of riflemen, stretcher bearers and 
escorts for the prisoners. The raiding 
parties were commanded by Mr. Hammer, 
148 


DAVE HAMMER 


with Sergt. Sacobie second in command, 
and Mr. Smith, with Sergt. Richard Stark- 
ley second in command. Corp. Hiram Sill 
was in Hammer’s crowd. 

Captain Scammell from brigade, the 
colonel and the adjutant stood in the trench 
at the point of exit. Suddenly they heard 
the dry, smashing reports of grenades 
through the chatter of machine-gun fire on 
the left. The bombs went fast and furious, 
punctuated by the crack of rifles and bursts 
of pistol fire. S. O. S. rockets went up from 
the German positions; and, as if in answer 
to those signals, our batteries laid a heavy 
barrage on and just in rear of the enemy’s 
support trenches. The colonel flashed a 
light on his wrist. 

^^They have been in four minutes,” he 
said. 

At that moment a muddy figure with 
149 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

blackened face and hands and a slung rifle 
on his back scrambled into the trench, 
turned and pulled something over the 
parapet that sprawled at the colonel’s 
feet. 

^‘Here’s one of them, sir; and there’s more 
coming,” said the man of mud. ^‘Ah! 
Here’s another. Boost him over, you fel- 
lers.” 

Into the trench tumbled another Fritz, 
and then a third, and then a Canadian, and 
then two more prisoners and the third 
Canadian. 

“Five,” said the last of the escort. “Us 
three started for home with eight, but some- 
thing hit the rest of ’em — T-M bomb, I 
reckon.” 

“Sure it was,” said the Canadian who had 
arrived first. “Don’t I know? I got a 
chunk of it in my leg.” He stooped and 
150 



^HERE^S ONE OF THEM^ SIR; AND THERE^S AIORE 

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DAVE HAMMER 


fumbled at the calf of his right leg. The 
adjutant turned a light on him, and the man 
extended his hand, dripping with blood. 

‘‘You beat it for the M. O., my lad,” 
said the colonel. 

Five more prisoners came in under a 
guard of two; and then six more of the 
raiders arrived, two of whom were carry- 
ing Lieut. Smith. The lieutenant’s head 
was bandaged roughly, and the dressing 
was already soaked with blood. 

“We did them in, sir,” he said thickly to 
the colonel. “Caught them in bunches — 
and bombed three dugouts.” 

He was carried away, still muttering of 
the fight. By that time the majority of the 
other parties were in. Several of the men 
were wounded — and they had brought their 
dead with them, three in number. The 
Germans had turned their trench mortars 
151 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

on their own front line from their support 
trenches. 

“They’re not all in yet,” said Capt. Keen. 
“Hammer isn’t in.” 

Just then Dick Starkley slid into the 
trench. 

“That you, Dick? Did you see Mr. 
Hammer? Or Frank Sacobie? Or Bruce 
McDonald?” 

“I have McDonald — but some one’s got 
to help me lift him over,” said Dick breath- 
lessly. “Heavy as a horse — and hit pretty 
bad!” 

Two men immediately slipped over the 
top and hoisted big McDonald into the 
trench. Hiram Sill put a hand on Dick’s 
shoulder. 

“Dave Hammer and Sacobie,” he whis- 
pered, “are still out. Hadn’t we better — ” 

“Right,” said Dick. “Come on out.” 


152 


DAVE HAMMER 


He turned to Capt. Scammell. ‘Tlease 
don’t let the guns shorten for a minute or 
two, sir; Sill and I have to go out again.” 

Without waiting for an answer they 
whipped over the sandbags. Hiram was 
back in two minutes. He turned on the 
fire step and received something that Dick 
and Frank Sacobie lifted over to him. It 
was Dave Hammer, unconscious and breath- 
ing hoarsely, with his eyes shut, his bor- 
rowed tunic drenched with mud and blood 
and one of his bestarred sleeves shot away. 
Capt. Scammell swayed against the colo- 
nel and, for a second, put his hand to his. 

T 

eyes. 

^^Steady, lad, steady,” said the colonel in 
a queer, cracked voice. “Keen, tell the 
guns to drop on their front line with all 
they’ve got — and then some.” 

To the whining and screeching of our 


153 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

shells driving low overhead and the tumul- 
tuous chorus of their exploding, passed the 
undismayed soul of Lieut. David Hammer 
of the Canadian Infantry. 

Heedless of the coming and going of the 
shells and the quaking of the parapet, Sac- 
obie sat on the fire step with his hands be- 
tween his knees and stared fixedly at noth- 
ing; but Hiram Sill and young Dick Stark- 
ley wept without thought of concealment, 
and their tears washed white furrows down 
their blackened faces. 


154 


CHAPTER VII 

PETER WRITES A LETTER 

I N March, 1916, Sergt. Peter Starkley 
got back to his own country, bigger 
in the chest and an inch taller than 
when he had gone away. He walked a little 
stiffly on his right foot, it is true — but what 
did that matter? His letters to the people 
at home had, by intention, given them only 
a vague idea of the possible date of his ar- 
rival. They knew that he was coming, that 
he was well, and that his new leg was such 
a masterpiece of construction that he had 
danced on it in London on two occasions. 
Otherwise he was unannounced. 

He went to the town of Stanley first 
and left his baggage in the freight shed 
at the siding. With his haversack on his 


155 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

shoulder and a stout stick in his right hand, 
he set out along the white and slippery 
road. Before he got to the bridge a two- 
horse sled overtook him, and the driver, an 
elderly man whom he did not know, in- 
vited him to climb on. Peter accepted the 
invitation with all the agility at his com- 
mand. 

“You step a mite lame on your right leg,’’ 
said the driver. 

“That’s so,” replied Peter, smiling. 

“Been soldierin’, hey? See any fight- 
in’?” 

“Yes, I’ve been in Flanders.” 

“That so? I’ve got a boy in the war. 
Smart boy, too. They give him a job right 
in England. He wears spurs to his boots, 
he does ; and it ain’t everyone kin wear them 
spurs, he writes me. This here war ain’t 
all in Flanders. We had some shootin’ 
166 


PETER WRITES A LETTER 


round here about a year back out Pike’s Set- 
tlement way. A young feller in soldier uni- 
form was drivin’ along, and some one shot 
at him from the woods. That’s what he 
said, but my boy — that was afore he went 
to the war — says like enough he shot him- 
self so’s to git out of goin’. He’s a smart 
lad — that’s why they give him a job in Eng- 
land. Army Service Corps, he is — so I 
reckon maybe he’s right about that feller 
shootin’ himself.” 

“What’s his name?” asked Peter quietly. 

“Starkley. Peter Starkley from Beaver 
Dam.” 

“I’m asking the name of that smart son 
of yours.” 

“Gus Todder’s his name — Gus Todder, 
junior. Maybe you know him,” was the 
reply. 

“No, but I’ve got his number,” said Peter. 

157 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

‘‘You tell him so in the next letter you write 
him. Tell him that Sergt. Peter Starkley 
of the 26th Canadian Infantry Battalion will 
be glad to see him when he comes home; 
tell him not to cut himself on those spurs 
of his in the meantime; and you’d better 
advise him to warn his father not to shoot 
his mouth off in future to military men 
about things he is ignorant of. Here’s 
where I get off. Thanks for the lift.” 

Peter left the sled, but turned at the 
other’s voice and stood looking back at him. 

“I didn’t get the hang of all that you was 
sayin’,” said Todder. He was plainly dis- 
concerted. 

“Never mind; your son will catch the 
drift of it,” replied Peter. “I am too happy 
about getting home to be fussy about little 
things, but don’t chat quite so freely with 
every returned infantryman you see about 
158 


PETER WRITES A LETTER 


your son’s smartness. You call it smart- 
ness — but the fellows up where I left my 
right leg have another name for it.” 

Opening the white gate, he went up the 
deep and narrow path between snow banks 
to the white house. At the top of the short 
flight of steps that led to the winter porch 
that inclosed the front door, he looked over 
his shoulder and saw Todder still staring 
at him. Peter grinned and waved his 
hand, then opened the door of the porch. 

As he closed the door behind him, the 
house door opened wide before him. 
Vivia stood on the threshold. She stared 
at him with her eyes very round and her 
lips parted, but she did not move or speak. 
She held her slim hands clasped before her 
— clasped so tight that the knuckles were 
colorless. Her small face, which had been 
as pale as her clasped hands at the first 
159 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 


glimpse, turned suddenly as red as a rose; 
and her eyes, which had been very bright 
even to their wonderful depths, were 
dimmed suddenly with a shimmer of tears. 
And for a long time — for ten full seconds, 
it may have been — Peter also stood motion- 
less and stared. The heavy stick slipped 
from his fingers and fell with a clatter on 
the floor of the porch. He stepped for- 
ward then and enfolded her in his khaki- 
clad arms, safe and sure against the big 
brass buttons of his greatcoat; and just then 
the door of the porch opened, and Mr. 
Todder said: 

“I ain’t got the hang of yer remarks yet, 
young feller.” 

“Chase yourself away home,” replied 
Peter, without turning his head; and there 
was something in the tone of his voice that 
caused Mr. Todder to withdraw his head 
160 


PETER WRITES A LETTER 


from the porch and to retire, muttering, to 
his sled. Vivia had not paid the slightest 
heed to the interruption. She drew Peter 
into the hall. 

“I was afraid,” she whispered. didn’t 
know how much they had hurt you, Peter 
— but I wasn’t afraid of that. I should love 
you just as much if they had crippled you, 
— I am so selfish in my love, Peter, — but I 
was afraid, at first, that I might see a 
change in your eyes.” 

‘^There couldn’t be a change in my eyes 
when I look at you, unless I were blind,” 
said Peter. “Even if I were blind, I guess 
I could see you. But I am the same as I 
was, inside and out — all except a bit of 
a patent leg.” 

Just then Mrs. Hammond made her dis- 
creet appearance, expressed her joy and sur- 
prise at the sight of Peter and ventured a 
161 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

motherly kiss. Mr. Hammond came in 
from the store half an hour later and wel- 
comed Peter cordially. The man had lost 
weight, and his face was grim. He got 
Peter to himself for a few minutes just be- 
fore supper. 

^^Jim is still on the other side the border 
somewhere, I guess,” he said, “though I 
haven’t heard from him for months. Pve 
kept the shooting business quiet, Peter — and 
even about his deserting; but I had to tell 
ihis mother and Vivia that he wasn’t any 
good as a soldier and had gone away. I 
made up some kind of story about it. 
Other people think he’s in France, I guess 
— even your folks at Beaver Dam. But 
what do you hear of Pat? He isn’t much 
of a hand at writing letters, but was well 
when he wrote last to his mother.” 

“I didn’t see him over there, but Henry 
162 


PETER WRITES A LETTER 

ran across him and said that he is doing 
fine work. He’s got his third pip and is 
attached to headquarters of one of the bri- 
gades of the First Division as a learner. 
He has been wounded once, I believe, but 
very slightly.” 

‘‘And I used to think that Pat wasn’t 
much good — too easy-going and loose- 
footed,” said Mr. Hammond bitterly. “My 
idea of a man was a storekeeper. Well, 
I think of him now, and I stick out my 
chest — and then I remember Jim, and my 
chest caves in again.” 

They were interrupted then by Vivia; so 
nothing more was said about the deserter. 
After supper Peter had to prove to the 
family that he could dance on his new leg. 

“Fll hitch the grays to the pung,” said 
Mr. Hammond when about eight o’clock 
Peter got ready to go. “It’s a fine night, 
163 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

and the roads are a marvel. I’ll drive you 
home.” 

‘‘And I am going too,” said Vivia. 

Dry maple sticks burned on the hearth 
of the big Franklin stove in the sitting room 
of Beaver Dam. Flora sat at the big table 
writing a letter to Dick; John Starkley and 
Jim Hammond played checkers; and Mrs. 
Starkley nodded in a chair by the fire. 
Emma had gone to bed. John Starkley had 
his hand raised and hovering for a master 
move when a jangle of bells burst suddenly 
upon their ears. Flora darted to a win- 
dow, and the farmer hastened to the front 
door; but by the time Flora had drawn back 
the curtains and her father had opened the 
door Jim Hammond was upstairs and in his 
room. 

Jim did not light the candle that stood 
on the window sill at the head of his bed. 

164 


PETER WRITES A LETTER 

He closed the door behind him. The 
blind was up; starshine from the world of 
white and purple and silver without sifted 
faintly into the little room. He stood for 
a minute in the middle of the floor, listen- 
ing to the broken and muffled sounds of 
talk and laughter from the lower hall. He 
heard a trill of Vivia’s laughter. What 
had brought Vivia out again, he wondered. 
News of Peter, beyond a doubt; and 
good news, to judge by the sounds. He 
seated himself cautiously on the edge of 
the bed. 

Now he heard his father’s voice. Yes — 
and John Starkley was laughing. There 
was another man’s voice, but he could hear 
only a low note of it now and then in the 
confused, happy babble of sound. A door 
shut — and then he could not hear anything. 
He wondered who the third man was and 
165 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

decided that he probably was some one 
from the village who had just arrived home 
and who had brought messages from Peter. 
Perhaps, he thought, Peter was even then 
on his way from England. 

Jim sat there with the faint shine of the 
stars falling soft on the rag carpet at his 
feet and thought what wonderful people 
the Starkleys were. They had taken him 
in and treated him like one of the family 
— and like a white man. Now that Peter 
was coming home and would be able to 
help with the work, he would go away and 
show John Starkley that he had found his 
courage and his manhood. He had made 
his plans in a general way weeks before. 
He would go to another province and en- 
list in the artillery or in the infantry under 
an assumed name; if he ^‘made good,” or 
got killed, John Starkley would tell all the 
166 


PETER WRITES A LETTER 

good he could of him to his family in Stan- 
ley. Already he felt lonely, a dreary chill 
of homesickness, at the thought of leaving 
Beaver Dam. 

A door opened and closed downstairs, 
but Jim Hammond was too busy with his 
thoughts and high resolves to hear the faint 
sounds. He even did not hear the feet on 
the carpeted stairs — and a hand was on the 
latch of the door before he knew that some 
one was about to enter the room. He sat 
rigid and stared at the door. 

The door opened and some one entered 
who bulked large and tall in the pale half 
gloom of the room. The visitor halted and 
turned his face toward the bed. 

‘Who’s there?” he asked; and Jim could 
see the shoulders lower and advance a 
little and the whole figure become tense as 
if for attack. 


167 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

“It’s me, Peter!” whispered Jim sharply 
“Shut the door quick!” 

“You! You, Jim Hammond!” said 
Peter in a voice of amazement and anger. 
“What the mischief are you doing here?” 
Without turning his face from the bed he 
shut the door behind him with his heel. 
“Light the candle and pull down the shade. 
Let me see you.” 

Jim got to his feet and reached for the 
shade, but Peter spoke before he touched it. 

“No! The candle first!” exclaimed 
Peter, with an edge to his voice. “I don’t 
trust you in the dark any more than I trust 
you in the woods.” 

Hammond struck a match and lit the 
candle, then drew down the shade and 
turned with his back to the window. His 
face was pale. “I didn’t figure on your 
getting home so soon,” he said in an un- 


168 


PETER WRITES A LETTER 

steady voice. “I didn’t intend to be 
here. I thought I’d be gone before you 
came.” 

“What are you doing here, anyway?” 
demanded Peter. “What’s the game? 
Sitting in my room, on my bed, quite at 
home, by thunder! And your father thinks 
you are in the States. Does my father 
know you are here?” 

Jim smiled faintly. “Yes, he knows — 
and all your folks know. I’ve been here 
since about the middle of October, working, 
and sleeping in this room every night. My 
people don’t know where I am — but when 
I get to France you can tell them. Your 
father doesn’t know that it was I who fired 
that shot — and when I found you hadn’t 
told him that, or even that I was a deserter, 
I felt it was up to me to do my best for 
you while you were away. So I’ve worked 
169 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

hard and been happy here; and I’ll be sorry 
to go away — but I must go now that you’re 
home again. Don’t tell my people I’m 
here, Peter.” 

“You have been living here ever since 
the middle of October, working here, and 
your own father and mother don’t know 
where you are?” 

“Your people are the only ones who 
know.” 

Peter eyed him in silence for a minute. 

“Why did you shoot me, Jim?” he asked 
more gently. 

“How do I know?” exclaimed Ham- 
mond. “I was drinking; I was just about 
mad with drink. I liked you well enough, 
Peter, — I didn’t want to kill you, — but the 
devil was in me. It was drink made me 
act so bad in St. John; it was drink made 
me desert; it was drink that came near mak- 
170 


PETER WRITES A LETTER 


ing a murderer of me. That’s the truth, 
Peter — and now I wish you’d go down- 
stairs, for I don’t want my father or Vivia 
to find me here — or to know anything about 
me till I’m in France.” 

‘^Shall I find you here when I come 
back?” asked Peter. 

“I’ll come downstairs as soon as they 
go,” said Hammond. 

Peter was about to leave the room when 
he suddenly remembered the errand that 
had brought him away from the company 
downstairs. It was a photograph of him- 
self taken at the age of five years. Vivia 
had heard of it and asked for it; and be- 
fore either of his parents or Flora had been 
able to think of a way of stopping him he 
had started upstairs for it. Now he found 
it on the top of a shelf of old books and 
wiped off the dust on his sleeve. 

171 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

^‘Vivia wants it/’ he said, smiling self- 
consciously. 

He found Flora waiting at the head of 
the stairs for him. 

“It’s all right; I’ve had a talk with him,” 
he whispered, and when he reached the sit- 
ting room he met the anxious glances of 
his parents with a smile and nod that set 
their immediate anxieties at rest. 

It was past midnight when Vivia and her 
father drove away. Then Jim came down- 
stairs, and Peter shook hands with him in 
the most natural way in the world. 

“When we met in my bedroom we were 
both too astonished to shake hands,” ex- 
plained Peter. 

“You must sleep in Dick’s room now, 
Peter,” said Mrs. Starkley. 

“Only for one night,” said Jim, trying 
to smile but making a poor job of it. “I’ll 
172 


PETER WRITES A LETTER 

be off to-morrow, now that Peter is home 
again — just as I planned all along, you 
know. I — it isn’t the going back to the 
army I mind ; it is — leaving you people.” 

He smiled more desperately than ever. 

Mrs. Starkley and Flora did not dare 
trust their voices to reply. John Starkley 
laid a hand on Jim’s shoulder and said, 
‘‘Go when it suits you, Jim, and come back 
when it suits you — and we shall miss you 
when you are away, remember that.” 

The three men sat up for another hour, 
talking of Peter’s experiences and Jim’s 
plans. They went upstairs at last, but even 
then neither Peter nor Jim could sleep, for 
the one was restless with happiness and the 
other with the excitement of impending 
change. Peter would see Vivia on the 
morrow, and Jim would meet strange faces. 
Peter had returned to the security that he 
173 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

had fought and shed his blood for and to 
the life and people he loved; Jim’s fighting 
was all before him, and behind him a dis- 
grace to be outlived. 

After a while Peter got up and went to 
Jim’s room in his pyjamas; he sat on the 
edge of Jim’s bed, and they talked of the 
fighting over in France. 

‘‘I’ve been thinking about my reenlist- 
ment,” said Jim, “and I guess I’ll take a 
chance on my own name. It’s my 
name I want to make good.” 

“Sounds risky — but I don’t believe it is 
as risky as it sounds,” said Peter. 

“Not if I go far enough away to enlist — 
to Halifax or Toronto. There must be 
lots of Hammonds in the army. I’ll take 
the risk, anyway. It isn’t likely I’ll run 
across any of the old crowd. None of our 
old officers would be hard on me, I guess, if 
174 


PETER WRITES A LETTER 

they found me fighting and doing my duty.” 

^‘Capt. Long is dead. A great many of 
the old crowd are dead, and others have 
been promoted out of the regiment. Re- 
member Dave Hammer?” 

“Yes. If I could ever be as good a sol- 
dier as Dave Hammer I think I’d forget — 
except sometimes in the middle of the night, 
maybe — what a mean, worthless fellow I 
have been.” 

“I’ll tell you what, Jim,” said Peter sud- 
denly, “I’ll write a letter for you to carry; 
and if any one spots you over there and is 
nasty about it, you go to an)' officer you 
know in the old battalion and tell the truth 
and show my letter. I guess mat will clear 
your name, Jim, if you do your duty.” 

“You don’t mean to put everything in the 
letter, do you?” 

“Only what is known officially — that you 
175 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

went home from your regiment here in 
Canada on pass, started acting tne fool and 
deserted. That is the charge against you, 
Jim — desertion. But it is the mildest sort 
of desertion, and reenlistment just about 
offsets it. The same thing done in France 
in the face of the enemy is punished — you 
know how.” 

“Yes, I know how it is punished,” said 
Hammond. “You wouldn’t worry about 
that if you knew as much about now I feel 
now as I do myself. Of course iVe got to 
prove it before you’ll believe it, Feter, but 
I’m not afraid to fight.” 

When Peter had gone back to his room, 
he sat down to write the letter that Jim 
Hammond was to carry in his pocket. It 
was a long letter, and Peter was a slow 
writer. He spared no pains in making 
every point of his argument perfectly clear. 

176 


PETER WRITES A LETTER 

He staked the military reputation of the 
whole Starkley family on James Ham- 
mond’s future behavior as a soldier. He 
sealed it with red wax and his great-grand- 
father’s seal and addressed the envelope to 
^‘Any Officer of the 26th Can. Infty. Bn. or 
of any Unit of the Can. Army Corps of the 
B. E. F.” When finally he had the letter 
done, it was morning. 


177 


CHAPTER VIII 

THE 26th ''mops UP” 

A fter Jim Hammond went away 
from Beaver Dam he wrote to 
Mrs. Starkley from Toronto, say- 
ing that he had enlisted in a new infantry 
battalion and that all was well with him. 
That was the last news from him, or of 
him, to be received at Beaver Dam for 
many months. 

The war held and crushed and sweated 
on the western front. Every day found the 
Canadians in the grinding and perilous toil 
of it. In April, 1916, the Second Cana- 
dian Division held the ground about St. 
Eloi against terrific onslaughts. Then and 
there ‘were fought those desperate actions 
known as the Battles of the Craters. Hi- 
178 


THE 26 TH ^^MOPS UP^ 

ram Sill, D. C. M., now a sergeant, re- 
ceived a wound that put him out of action 
for nearly two months. Dick Starkley was 
buried twice, once beneath the lip of one 
of the craters as it returned to earth after 
a jump into the air, and again in his dug- 
out. No bones were broken, but he had 
to rest for three days. 

Other Canadian divisions moved into the 
Ypres salient in April — back to their first 
field of glory of the year before. That 
salient of terrible fame, advanced round 
the battered city of Ypres like a blunt spear- 
head driven into the enemy’s positions, will 
live for centuries after its trenches are 
leveled. British soldiers have fallen in 
their tens of thousands in and beyond and 
on the flanks of that city of destruction. 
From three sides the German guns flailed 
it through four desperate years. Masses 
179 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

of German infantry surged up and broke 
against its torn edges, German gas drenched 
it, liquid fire scorched it, and mines blasted 
it. Now and again the edge of that sali- 
ent was bent inward a little for a day or a 
week; but in those four years no German 
set foot in that city of heroic ruins except 
as a prisoner. 

The 26th Battalion celebrated Dominion 
Day — ^July ist — by raiding a convenient 
point of the German front line. The as- 
sault was made by a party of twenty-five 
‘^other ranks” commanded by two junior 
officers. It was supported by the fire of 
our heavy field guns and heavy and medium 
trench mortars. 

Sergts. Frank Sacobie and Hiram Sill 
were of the party, but Dick Starkley was 
not. Dick could not be spared for it from 
his duties with his platoon, for he was in 
180 


THE 26 TH ^‘MOPS UP’^ 


acting command during the enforced ab- 
sence of Lieut. Smith, who was suffering 
at a base hospital from a combination of 
gas and fever. The men from New Bruns- 
wick were observed by the garrison of the 
threatened trench while they were still on 
the wrong side of the inner line of hostile 
wire, and a heavy but wild fire was opened 
on them with rifles and machine guns. But 
the raiders did not pause. They passed 
through the last entanglement, entered the 
trench, killed a number of the enemy and 
collected considerable material for identi- 
fication. Their casualties were few, and no 
wound was of a serious nature. Hiram 
Sill was dizzy and bleeding freely^ but 
cheerful. One small fragment of a bomb 
had cut open his right cheek, and another 
had nicked his left shoulder. Sacobie car- 
ried him home on his back. 


181 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 


It was a little affair, remarkable only as 
a new way of celebrating Dominion Day, 
and differed only in minor details from hun- 
dreds of other little bursts of aggressive 
activity on that front. 

Later in the month a Distinguished Ser- 
vice Order, two Military Crosses, four Dis- 
tinguished Conduct Medals and five Mili- 
tary Medals were awarded to the battalion 
in recognition of its work about St. Eloi. 
Dick Starkley and Frank Sacobie each drew 
a D. C. M. A few days after that Lieut. 
Smith returned from Blighty and took back 
the command of his platoon from Dick; 
and at the same time he informed Dick 
that he was earmarked for a commission. 

The Canadians began their march from 
the Ypres salient to the Somme on Septem- 
ber I, 1916. They marched cheerfully, 
glad of a change and hoping for the best. 

182 


THE 26 TH ^^MOPS UP^ 

The weather was fine, and the towns and 
villages through which they passed seemed 
to them pleasant places full of friendly 
people. They were going to fight on a 
new front; and, as became soldiers, it was 
their firm belief that any change would be 
for the better. 

On the 8th of September, while on the 
march, Dick Starkley was gazetted a lieu- 
tenant of Canadian Infantry. Mr. Smith 
found his third star in the same gazette, 
and Dick took the platoon. Henry visited 
the battalion a few days later and presented 
to the new lieutenant an old uniform that 
would do very well until the London tailors 
were given a chance. Dick was a proud 
soldier that day; and an opportunity of 
showing his new dignity to the enemy soon 
occurred. That opportunity was the fa- 
mous battle of Courcelette. 


183 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

From one o’clock of the afternoon of 
September 14 until four o’clock the next 
morning our heavy guns and howitzers be- 
labored with high explosive shells the forti- 
fied sugar refinery and its strong trenches 
and the village of Courcelette beyond. 
Then for an hour the big guns were silent. 
The battalions of the Fourth and Sixth Bri- 
gades waited in their jumping-off trenches 
before Pozieres. The Fifth Brigade, of 
which the 26th Battalion was a unit, rested 
in reserve. 

Dawn broke with a clear sky and promise 
of sunshine and a frosty tingle in the air. 
At six o’clock the eighteen-pounder guns 
of nine brigades of artillery, smashing into 
sudden activity, laid a dense barrage on 
the nearest rim of the German positions. 
Four minutes later the barrage lifted and 
jumped forward one hundred yards, and 


184 


THE 26 TH ^^MOPS 

the infantry climbed out of their trenches 
and followed it into the first German 
trench. The fight was on in earnest, and in 
shell holes, in corners of trenches and 
against improvised barricades many great 
feats of arms were dared and achieved. A 
tank led the infantry against the strongly 
fortified ruins of the refinery and toppled 
down everything in its path. 

Lieut. Dick Starkley and his friends 
gave ear all morning to the din of battle, 
wished themselves farther forward in the 
middle of it and wondered whether the 
brigades in front would leave anything for 
them to do on the morrow. Messages of 
success came back to them from time to 
time. By eight o’clock, after two hours of 
fighting, the Canadia[ns had taken the 
formidable trenches, the sugar refinery, a 
fortified sunken road and hundreds of 


185 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

prisoners. The way was open to Cource- 
lette. 

they don’t slow up — if they don’t 
quit altogether this very minute- — they’ll 
be crowding right in to Courcelette and 
doing us out of a job!” complained Sergt. 
Hiram Sill. ^^That’s our job, Courcelette 
is — our job for to-morrow. They’ve done 
what they set out to do, and if they go ahead 
now and try something they haven’t plan- 
ned for, well, they’ll maybe bite off more 
than they can chew. The psychology of 
it will be all wrong; their minds aren’t 
made up to that idea.” 

“I guess the idee ain’t the hull thing,” 
remarked a middle-aged corporal. “Many 
a good job has been done kind of unex- 
pectedly in this war. I reckon this here 
psychology didn’t have much to do with 
your D. C. M.” 


186 


THE 26TH ‘‘MOPS 

“That’s where you’re dead wrong, 
Henry,” said Hiram. “I knew I’d get a 
D. C. M. all along, from the first minute I 
ever set foot in a trench. My mind and 
my spirit were all made up for it. I knew 
I’d get a D. C. M. just as sure as I know 
now that I’ll get a bar to it — if I don’t go 
west first.” 

Dick, who had joined the group, laughed 
and smote Hiram on the shoulder. 

“You’re dead right!” he exclaimed. 
“Old Psychology, you’re a wonder of the 
age! Be careful what you make up your 
heart and soul and mind to next or you’ll 
find yourself in command of the division.” 

“What do you mean, lieutenant?” asked 
Sill. 

“You’ve been awarded the D. C. M. 
again, that’s all!” cried Dick, shaking him 
violently by the hand. “You’ve got your 
187 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

bar, Old Psychology! Word of it just 
came through from the Brigade.” 

Sergt. Sill blushed and grew pale and 
blushed again. 

“Say, boys. Pm a proud man,” he said. 
“There are some things you can’t get used 
to — and being decorated for distinguished 
conduct on the field of glory is one of them, 
I guess. If you’ll excuse me, boys, — and 
you, lieutenant, — I’ll just wander along that 
old trench a piece and think it over by my- 
self.” 

The way was open to Courcelette. The 
battalions that had done the work in a few 
hours and that, despite a terrific fire from 
the enemy, had established themselves be- 
yond their final objective, were anxious to 
continue about this business without pause 
and clean up the strongly garrisoned town. 
They had fought desperately in those few 
188 


THE 26 TH ^^MOPS 

hours, however, and the enemy’s fire had 
taken toll of them, and so they were told to 
sit tight in their new trenches; but the com- 
mon sense of their assertion that Courcelette 
itself should be assaulted without loss of 
time, before the beaten and astounded 
enemy could recover, was admitted. 

At half past three o’clock that afternoon 
the Fifth Brigade received its orders and 
instructions and immediately passed them 
on and elaborated them to the battalions 
concerned. By five o’clock the three bat- 
talions that were to make the attack were 
on their way across the open country, ad- 
vancing in waves. German guns battered 
them but did not break their alignment. 
They reached our new trenches and, with 
the barrage of our own guns now moving 
before them, passed through and over the 
victorious survivors of the morning’s battle. 


189 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

The French Canadians and the Nova 
Scotians went first in two waves. 

Dick Starkley and his platoon were on 
the right of the front line of the 26th, which 
was the third wave of attack. “Mopping 
up” was the battalion’s particular job on 
this occasion. 

“Mopping up,” like most military terms, 
means considerably more than it suggests 
to the ear. The mops are rifles, bombs and 
bayonets; the things to be mopped are 
machine-gun posts still in active operation, 
bays and sections of trenches still occupied 
by aggressive Germans, mined cellars and 
garrisoned dugouts. Everything of a men- 
acing nature that the assaulting waves have 
passed over or outflanked without demolish- 
ing must be dealt with by the “moppers- 
up.” 

The two lines of the 26th advanced at an 
190 


THE 26TH ^^MOPS 

easy walk; there was about five yards be- 
tween man and man. Each man carried 
water and rations for forty-eight hours and 
five empty sandbags, over and above his 
arms and kit. The men kept their align- 
ment all the way up to the edge of the vil- 
lage. Now and again they closed on the 
center or extended to right or left to fill a 
gap. Wounded men crawled into shell 
holes or were picked up and carried for- 
ward. Dead men lay sprawled beneath 
their equipment, with their rifles and bay- 
onets out thrust toward Courcelette even in 
death. The ^ Valking wounded” continued 
to go forward, some unconscious or unmind- 
ful of their injuries and others trying to 
bandage themselves as they walked. 

Col. MacKenzie led them, and beside 
him walked a company commander. The 
two shouted to each other above the din of 
191 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

battle, and sometimes they turned and 
shouted back to their men. Other officers 
walked a few paces in front of their men. 

A bursting shell threw Dick backward 
into a small crater that had been made 
earlier in the day and knocked the breath 
out of him for a few seconds. Frank Sac- 
obie picked him up. The colonel gave the 
signal to double, and the right flank of the 
26th broke from a walk into a slow and 
heavy jog. Sacobie jogged beside Dick. 

‘^Just a year since we came into the 
line!” shouted Dick. 

i ^‘We were pa’tridge shootin’ two years 
ago to-day!” bawled Sacobie. 

The colonel turned with his back to Cour- 
celette and his face to his men and yelled 
at them to come on. ^‘Speed up on the 
right!” he shouted. ^The left is ahead. 
The 25th is in already. Shake a leg, boys. 

192 


THE 26TH ^^MOPS 

If they don’t move quick enough in front, 
blow right through ’em.” 

At the near edge of the village a number 
of New Brunswickers, including their colo- 
nel, overtook and mingled with the second 
line of the 22d. Our barrage was lifted 
clear of Courcelette by this time and set 
like a spouting wall of fire and earth along 
the far side of it; but the shells of the enemy 
continued to pitch into it, heaving bricks 
and rafters and the soil of little gardens into 
the vibrating twilight. Machine guns 
streamed their fire upon the invaders from 
attics and cellars and sand-bagged windows. 
The bombs and rifles of the 22d smashed 
and cracked just ahead; and on the left, 
still farther ahead, crashes and bangs and 
shouts told all who could hear the where- 
abouts of Hilliam and his lads from Nova 
Scotia. 


193 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

Dick Starkley saw a darting flicker of 
fire from the butt of a broken chimney be- 
yond a cellar full of bricks and splintered 
timber. He shouted to his men, let his 
pistol swing from its lanyard and threw a 
bomb. Then, stooping low, he dashed at 
the jumble of ruins in the cellar. He saw 
his bomb burst beside the stump of chimney. 
The machine gun flickered again, and 
spat-spat-spat came quicker than thought. 
Other bombs smashed in front of him, to 
right and left of the chimney. He got his 
right foot entangled in what had once been 
a baby’s crib. 

There he was, staggering on the very 
summit of that low mound of rubbish, 
fairly in line with the aim of the machine 
gun. Something seized him by some part 
of his equipment and jerked him backward. 
He lit on his back and slid a yard, then be- 
194 


THE 26 TH ^*MOPS 

held the face of Hiram Sill staring down at 
him. 

^‘Hit?” asked Hiram. 

^‘Don’t think so. No.” 

^‘Ifs a wonder.” 

Five men from Dick’s platoon joined 
them in the ruins. Together they threw 
seven grenades. The hidden gun ceased 
fire. Dick scrambled up and over the rub- 
bish and around what was left of the shat- 
tered chimney that masked the machine- 
gun post. In the dim light he saw sprawled 
shapes and crouching shapes, and one 
stooped over the machine gun, working 
swiftly to clear it again for action. Dick 
pistoled the gunner. The three survivors 
of that crew put up their hands. Sergt. 
Sill disarmed them and told them to ‘‘beat 
it” back to the Canadian lines. Fifty yards 
on they found Sacobie and two privates 
195 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

counting prisoners at the mouth of a dugout 
^‘Twenty-nine without a scratch,” said 
Sacobie. 

“Find stretchers for them and send them 
back with our wounded, under escort,” 
said Dick. “Put a corporal in charge. Is 
there a corporal here?” 

“Fm here, sir.” 

“You, Judd? Take them back with as 
many of our wounded as they can carry. 
Two men with you should be escort enough. 
Hand over the wounded and fetch up any 
grenades and ammunition you can get hold 
of.” 

Capt. Smith staggered up to Dick. 

“We are through and out the other side!” 
he gasped. “Get as many of our fellows 
as you can collect quick to stiffen this flank. 
Dig in beyond the houses — in line with the 
25th. The colonel is up there somewhere.” 
196 


THE 26 TH ^^MOPS 

He swayed and stumbled against the pla- 
toon commander. Dick supported him 
with an arm. 

^^Hit?’’ asked Dick. 

^‘Just what you’d notice,” said the cap- 
tain, straightening himself and reeling away. 

^^Go after him and do what you can for 
him,” said Dick to one of his men. ^‘Band- 
age him and then go look for an M. O.” 

Dick hurried on toward the forward edge 
of the village, strengthening his following 
as he went. The shelling was still heavy 
and the noise deafening, but the hand-to- 
hand fighting among the houses had les- 
sened. Dick led his men through one wall 
of a house that had been hit by a heavy shell 
and through the other wall into a little gar- 
den. There were bricks and tiles and iron 
shards in that garden; and in the middle 
of it, untouched, a little arbor of grapevines. 

197 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

Dick passed through the arbor on his way 
to the broken wall at the foot of the garden. 
There were two benches in it and a small 
round table. 

Dick went through the arbor in a second, 
and then he sprang to the broken crest of 
the wall. He had scarcely mounted upon 
it before something red burst close in front 
of his eyes. 


Dick was not astonished to find himself 
in the old garden at Beaver Dam. The 
lilacs were in flower and full of bees and 
butterflies. He still wore his shrapnel hel- 
met. It felt very uncomfortable, and he 
tried to take it off — but it stuck fast to his 
head. Even that did not astonish him. He 
saw an arbor of grapevines and entered it 
and sat down on a bench with his elbows 
on a small round table. He recognized it 
198 


THE 26 TH ^^MOPS UP^ 

as the arbor he had seen that evening in 
Courcelette — the evening of September 1 5. 

must have brought it home with 
me,” he reflected. ‘‘The war must be 
over.” 

Flora entered the arbor then and asked 
him why he was wearing an officer’s jacket. 
He thought it queer that she had not heard 
about his commission. 

“I was promoted on the Somme — no, it 
was before that,” he began, and then every- 
thing became dark. “I can’t see,” he 
said. 

“Don’t worry about that,” replied a 
voice that was not Flora’s. “Your eyes are 
bandaged for the time being. They’ll be 
as well as ever in a few days.” 

“I must have been dreaming. Where am 
I — and what is wrong with me?” 

“You are in No. 2 Canadian General 


199 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

Hospital and have been dreaming for al- 
most a week. But you are doing very 
well.’’ 

“What hit me? And have I all my legs 
and arms?” 

“It must have been a whiz-bang,” re- 
plied the unknown voice. “You are suffer- 
ing from head wounds that are not so 
serious as we feared and from broken ribs 
and a few cuts and gashes. You must 
drink this and stop talking.” 

Dick obediently drank it, whatever it 
was. 

“I wish you could give me some news 
of the battalion, and then I’d keep quiet for 
a long time,” he said. 

“Do you want me to open and read this 
letter that your brother left for you two 
days ago?” asked the Sister. 

She read as follows: 

200 


THE 26 TH ‘‘MOPS UP’ 

“Dear Dick. As your temperature is up 
and you refuse to know me I am leaving 
this note for you with the charming Sister 
who seems to be your C. O. just now. She 
tells me that you will be as fit as a fiddle in 
a month or so. Accept my congratulations 
on your escape and on the battle of Cour- 
celette. I have written to Beaver Dam 
about it and cabled that you will live to 
fight again. Frank Sacobie and that psy- 
chological sergeant with a D. C. M. and 
bar are booked for Blighty, to polish up 
for their commissions. I called on them 
after the fight. They are well — but I can’t 
say that they escaped without a scratch, for 
they both looked as if they had been mixing 
it up with a bunch of wildcats. Sacobie 
has a black eye and doesn’t know who or 
what hit him. 

“Do you remember Jim Hammond? He 
201 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

came over to a battalion of this division with 
a draft from England about four months 
ago. He looked me up one day last week 
and told me a mighty queer story about 
himself. I won’t try to repeat it, for I am 
sure he’ll tell it to you himself at the first 
opportunity. He is making good, as far 
as I can see and hear. Pat Hammond has 
a job in London now. He was badly gassed 
about a month ago. I will get another 
day’s special leave as soon as possible and 
pay you another visit. 

^‘Your affectionate brother, Henry Stark- 
ley.” 


202 


CHAPTER IX 


FRANK SACOBIE OBJECTS 

W ITHIN ten days of the battle of 
Courcelette, Lieut. Richard 
Starkley was able to see; and 
twenty days after that he was able to walk. 
His walking at first was an extraordinary 
thing, and extraordinary was the amount 
of pleasure that he derived from it. With 
a crutch under one shoulder and Sister Gil- 
bert under the other, bandaged and padded 
from hip to neck, and with his battered 
but entire legs wavering beneath him, he 
crossed the ward that first day without ex- 
ceeding the speed limit. Brother officers 
in various stages of repair did not refrain 
from expressing their opinions of his per- 
formance. 


203 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 


^‘Try to be back for tea, old son,” said a 
New Zealand major. 

^^Are those your legs or mine you’re fox- 
trotting with?” asked an English subaltern; 
and an elderly colonel called, “I’ll hop out 
and show you how to walk in a minute, if 
you don’t do better than that!” 

The colonel laughed, and the inmates of 
the other beds laughed, and Dick and 
Sister Gilbert laughed, for that, you must 
know, was a very good joke. The humor 
of the remark lay in the fact that the elderly 
colonel had not a leg to his name. 

Day by day Dick improved in pace and 
gait, and his activities inspired a number of 
his companions to shake an uncertain leg 
or two. The elderly colonel organized 
contests; and the great free-for-all race 
twice round the ward was one of the not- 
able sporting events of the war. 

204 


FRANK SACOBIE OBJECTS 


At last Dick was shipped to Blighty and 
admitted to a hospital for convalescent 
Canadian officers. There Capt. J. A. 
Starkley-Davenport soon found him. No 
change that the eye could detect had taken 
place in Jack Davenport. His face was 
as thin and colorless as when Dick had first 
seen it; his eyes were just as bright, and 
their glances as kindly and intent; his body 
was as frail and as immaculately garbed. 
Dick wondered how one so frail could 
exist a week without either breaking utterly 
or gaining in strength. 

“You’re a wonder, Dick!” exclaimed 
Davenport. 

“It strikes me that you are the wonder,” 
said Dick. 

“But they tell me that you stopped a 
whiz-bang and will be as fit as ever, nerve 
and body, in a little while.” 

205 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

stopped bits of it — but I don’t think 
it actually detonated on me. All I got was 
some of the splash. I was lucky!” 

“You were indeed,” said the other, with 
a shadow in his eyes. “I was lucky, too — 
though there have been times when I have 
been fool enough to wish that I had been 
left on the field.” Then he straightened 
his thin shoulders and laughed quietly. 
“But if I had gone west I should have 
missed Frank Sacobie and Hiram Sill. 
They lunched with me last week and have 
promised to turn up on Sunday. You’ll be 
right for Sunday, Dick, and I’ll have a 
pucka party in your honor.” 

“How are they, and what are they up to?” 
asked Dick. 

“They are at the top of their form, both 
of them, and up to anything,” replied 
Davenport. “Your Canadian cadet course 


206 


FRANK SACOBIE OBJECTS 


is the stiffest thing of its kind in England, 
but it doesn’t seem to bother those two. 
Frank is smarter than anything the Guards 
can show and is believed to be a rajah; 
and Hiram writes letters to Washington 
urging the formation of an American divi- 
sion to be attached to the Canadian Corps 
and suggesting his appointment to the com- 
mand of one of the brigades.” 

“Those letters must amuse the censors,” 
said Dick with a grin. 

“I imagine they do. Washington hasn’t 
answered yet; and so Hiram is getting his 
dander up and is pitching each letter a little 
higher than the one before it. Incident- 
ally, he has a great deal to say to our War 
Office, and his novel suggestions for devel- 
oping trench warfare seem to have awak- 
ened a variety of emotions in the brains and 
livers of a lot of worthy brass haU!^ 

207 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

Dick laughed. ‘‘What are his ideas for 
developing trench warfare?” 

“One is the organization of a shot-gun 
platoon in every battalion. The weapon is 
to be the duck gun, number eight bore, I 
believe. Hiram maintains that, used 
within a range of one hundred and fifty 
yards, those weapons would be superior to 
any in repulsing attacks in mass and in 
cleaning up raided trenches. He is a great 
believer in the deadly and demoralizing 
effects of point-blank fire.” 

“He is right in that — once you get rid of 
the parapet.” 

“He gets rid of the parapet with the 
point-blank fire of what he calls trench can- 
non — guns, three feet long, mounted so that 
they can be carried along a trench by 
four men; they are to fire ten- or twelve- 
pound high explosive shells from the front 
208 


FRANK SACOBIE OBJECTS 


line smack against the opposite parapet.” 

‘^It sounds right, too; but so many things 
sound right that work all wrong. What 
are his other schemes?” 

‘^One has to do with a thundering big six- 
hooked grapnel, with a wire cable attached, 
that is to be shot into the hostile lines from 
a big trench mortar and then winched back 
by steam. He expects his grapnel — give 
him power enough — to tear out trenches, 
machine-gun posts and battalion head- 
quarters, and bring home all sorts of odds 
and ends of value for identification pur- 
poses. Can’t you see the brigadier step- 
ping out before brekker to take a look at 
the night’s haul?” 

^^My hat! What did the War Ofhce 
think of that?” 

^^An acting assistant something or other 
of the name of Smythers and the rank of 
209 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

major was inspired by it to ask Hiram 
whether he had ever served in France. 
Hiram put over a twenty-page narrative 
of his exploits with the battalion, with ap- 
pendixes of maps and notes and extracts 
from brigade and battalion orders, and, so 
far as I know, the major has not yet re- 
covered sufficiently to retaliate.” 

“Well, I hope Frank Sacobie has left the 
War Office alone.” 

“Frank writes nothing and says very 
little more than that. He seems to give all 
his attention to his kit; but I have a sus- 
picion that he is a deep thinker. However 
that may be, his taste in dress is astonish- 
ingly good, and his deportment in society 
is in as good taste as his breeches.” 

“So he has a good time?” 

“He is very gay when he comes up to 
town,” answered Davenport. 


210 


FRANK SACOBIE OBJECTS 


“He deserves a good time, but he can’t 
get it and at the same time doll himself up, 
even in uniform, on his pay. How does 
he do it?” 

“You have guessed it, Dick.” 

“I think I have.” 

“Then there is no need of my saying much 
about it. I live on one sixth of my income. 
That leaves five sixths for my friends ; and 
often, Dick, it is the thought of the spend- 
ing of the five parts that gives me courage 
to go on keeping life in this useless body 
with the one part. Sometimes a soldier’s 
wife buys food for herself and children, or 
pays the rent, with my money; and the lion’s 
share of the pleasure of that transaction 
is mine. Sometimes a chap on leave spends 
a fistful of my treasury notes on dinners for 
himself and his girl; and those dinners give 
me more pleasure than the ones I eat my- 
211 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

self. I haven’t much of a stomach of my 
own now, you know; and I haven’t a girl 
of my own to take out to one — even if Wil- 
son would let me go out at night. It is not 
charity. I satisfy my own lost hunger for 
food through the medium of poor people 
with good appetites: I have my fun and 
cut a dash in new breeches and swagger 
service jackets through the medium of hard 
fighting fellows from France. I am not 
apologizing, you understand.” 

^‘You needn’t,” said Dick dryly; and then 
they both laughed. 

Hiram Sill and Frank Sacobie called on 
Dick at the hospital soon after ten o’clock 
on Sunday morning. They had come up 
to town the evening before. The greetings 
of the three friends were warm. Sacobie’s 
pleasure at the reunion found no voice, but 
shone in his eyes and thrilled in the grip of 
212 


FRANK SACOBIE OBJECTS 


his hand. Hiram Sill added words to the 
message of his beaming face. He expressed 
delighted amazement at Dick’s appearance. 

“I couldn’t quite beMeve it until now,” 
he said. ^‘Neither could you if you had 
seen yourself as we saw you when you were 
picked up. Nothing the matter with your 
face, except a dimple or two that you 
weren’t born with. All your legs and arms 
still your own. I’d sooner see this than a 
letter from Washington. With your luck 
you’ll live to command the battalion.” 

Dick grinned. His greetings to his 
friends had been as boyishly impulsive and 
cheery as ever; yet there was something 
looking out through the affection in his eyes 
that would have puzzled his people in New 
Brunswick if they had seen it. There was 
a question in the look and a hint of anxiety 
and perhaps the faintest shade of the airs 
213 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

of a fond father, a sympathetic judge and 
a hopeful appraiser. Frank and Hiram 
recognized and accepted it without thought 
or question. The look was nothing more 
than the shadow of the habit of responsibil- 
ity and command. 

Hiram talked about Washington and the 
War Office, and discussed his grapnel idea 
with considerable heat. Frank Sacobie 
took no part in that discussion and little in 
the general conversation. Soon after twelve 
o’clock all three set out in a taxicab for 
Jack Davenport’s house. 

The luncheon was successful. The other 
guests were three women — a cousin of 
Jack’s on the Davenport side and her two 
daughters. The host and Hiram Sill both 
conversed brilliantly. Frank was inspired 
to make at least five separate remarks of 
some half dozen words each. Dick soon 
214 


FRANK SACOBIE OBJECTS 


let the drift of the general conversation 
escape him, so interested did he become in 
the girl on his right. 

Kathleen Kingston seemed to him a 
strange mixture of shyness and self-posses- 
sion, of calmness and vivacity. The color- 
ing of her small face was wonderfully mo- 
bile — so Dick expressed it to himself — and 
yet her eyes were frank, steady and unem- 
barrassed. Her voice was curiously low 
and clear. 

Dick was conscious of feeling a vague 
and unsteady wonder at himself. Why 
this sudden interest in a girl? He had 
never felt anything of the kind before. 
Had this something to do with the wounds 
in his head? He could not entertain that 
suggestion seriously. However that might 
be, he' felt that his sudden interest in this 
young person whom he had not so much 
215 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

as heard of an hour ago greatly increased 
his interest in many things. He was con- 
scious of a sure friendship for her, as if he 
had known her for years. He knew that 
this friendship was a more important thing 
to him than his friendships with Hiram Sill 
and Frank Sacobie — and yet those friend- 
ships had grown day by day, strengthened 
week by week and stood the test of suffer- 
ing and peril. 

She told him that her father was still in 
France, but safe now at General Head- 
quarters, that her eldest brother had been 
killed in action in 1914, that another was 
fighting in the East, and that still another 
was a midshipman on the North Sea. 
Also, she told him that she wanted to go 
to France as a V. A. D., that she had left 
school six months ago and was working five 
hours every day making bandages and 
216 


FRANK SACOBIE OBJECTS 


splints, and that she was seventeen years 
old. Those confidences melted Dick’s 
tongue. He told her his own age and that 
he had added a little to it at the time of 
enlisting; he spoke of night and daylight 
raids and major offensive operations in 
which he had taken part, of the military 
careers of Henry and Peter and of life at 
Beaver Dam. She seemed to be as keenly 
interested in his confidences as he had been 
in hers. In the library, where coffee was 
served, Dick continued to cling to his new 
friend. 

The party came to an end at last, leav- 
ing Dick in a somewhat scattered state of 
mind. Before leaving with her daughters, 
Mrs. Kingston gave her address and a cor- 
dial invitation to make use of it to each of 
the three. Before long Wilson took Jack 
off to bed. Then Hiram left to keep an ap- 
217 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

pointment at the Royal Automobile Club 
with a captain who knew some one at the 
War Office. That left Frank and Dick 
with Jack Davenport’s library to them- 
selves. One place was much the same as 
another to Dick just then. He was again 
wondering if he could possibly be suffering 
in some subtle and painless way from the 
wounds in his head. With enquiring fin- 
gers he felt the spotless bandage that still 
adorned the top of his head. 

Sacobie got out of his chair suddenly, 
with an abruptness of movement that was 
foreign to him, and walked the length of 
the room and back. He halted before Dick 
and stared down at him keenly for several 
seconds without attracting that battered 
youth’s attention. So he fell again to pac- 
ing the room, walking lightly and with 
straight feet, the true Indian walk. At 


218 


FRANK SACOBIE OBJECTS 


last he halted again in front of Dick’s 
chair. 

“I am not going back to the battalion,” 
he said. 

Dick sat up with a jerk and stared at 
him. 

“I am not going back,” repeated Sacobie. 
“I shall get my commission, that is sure; 
but I shall not be an officer in the battal- 
ion.” 

^Why the mischief not?” exclaimed 
Dick. ^‘What’s the matter with the bat- 
talion, I’d like to know?” 

^‘Nothing,” replied the other. He moved 
away a few paces, then turned back again. 
“A good battalion. I was a good sergeant 
there. But I met Capt. Dodds, on leave, 
one day, and we had lunch together at 
Scott’s; and he feel pretty good — he felt 
pretty good — and he talked a lot. He told 
219 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

me how some officers and other ranks say 
the colonel didn’t do right when he put in 
my name for cadet course and a commis- 
sion. You know why, Dick. So I don’t 
go back to the infantry with my two stars.” 

“Do you mean because you are an In- 
dian? That is rot!” 

“No, it is good sense. You think about 
it hard as I have thought about it day and 
night. They don’t say I don’t know my 
job. The captain told me the colonel was 
right and everybody knew it when he said 
I should make the best scout officer in the 
brigade; and the men like me, you know 
that; but the men don’t want an Injun for 
an officer. They are white men. I am a 
Malecite — red. That is right. I don’t go 
back with my officer stars.” 

“Do you mean that you won’t take your 
commission?” asked Dick. 


220 


FRANK SACOBIE OBJECTS 


^‘No. I take it, sure. But not in the 
26th.’’ 

Dick did not argue. He had never con- 
sidered his friend’s case in that light before, 
but now he knew that Sacobie was right. 
The noncommissioned officers and men 
would not question Frank’s military quali- 
fications, his ability or his personal merits. 
His race was the only thing about him to 
which they objected — and that appeared 
objectionable in him only when they con- 
sidered him as an officer. As a ‘‘non-com” 
he was one of themselves, but as an officer 
they must consider him impersonally as a 
superior. There was where the New 
Brunswick soldiers would cease to consider 
their friend and comrade Frank Sacobie 
and see only a member of an inferior race. 
Their point of view would immediately 
revert to that of the old days before the war. 


221 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

when they would have laughed at a Male- 
cite’s undertaking to perform any task ex- 
cept paddling a canoe. 

“Will you transfer to another battalion?” 
asked Dick, as a result of his reflections. 

Frank shook his head but made no reply. 

“Then to an English battalion?” Dick 
persisted. “There are dozens that would 
be glad to have you, Frank. A Canadian 
with your record would not have to look 
far for a job in this war. Jack Daven- 
port’s old regiment would snap you up 
quick as a wink, commission and all, I bet 
a dollar.” 

The other smiled gravely. “That is 
right,” he said. “Capt. Davenport is my 
friend and knows what I am ; but most Eng- 
lish people want me to be some kind of 
prince from India. I am myself — a Cana- 
dian soldier. I don’t want to play the 
222 


FRANK SACOBIE OBJECTS 


monkey. Two-Blanket Sacobie was a big 
chief, with his salmon spear and sometimes 
nothing to eat. His squaw chopped the 
wood and carried the water. I am not a 
prince, nor I’m not a monkey. I come to 
the war, and the English people call me 
rajah; but the Englishman come to our 
country and hire me for a guide in the 
woods and call me a nigger. No, I am 
myself with what good I have in me. I 
can do to fight the Germans, and that is all 
I want, Dick. I try to be a gentleman, like 
Peter and Capt. Davenport, and the King 
will make me an officer. That is good. 
I will join the Royal Flying Corps. Then 
they will name me for what I am by what 
I do.” 

Dick gripped Frank’s right hand in a 
hearty clasp of respect and admiration. 

“You’re a brick!” he said. “Jack was 


223 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

right when he said you were a deep thinker.” 

“I got to think deep — deeper than you,” 
said Frank. “I got to think all for myself, 
because my fathers didn’t think at all.” 


224 


CHAPTER X 


DICK OBLIGES HIS FRIEND 

B oth. H iram Sill and Frank Sacobie 
completed the cadet course and 
passed the final examinations. 
After one last fling at Washington and one 
more astounding suggestion to the War 
Office, Mr. Sill went back to France and 
his battalion and took command of a pla- 
toon. Mr. Sacobie transferred, with his 
new rank, to the Royal Flying Corps and 
immediately began another course of in- 
struction. His brother officers decided 
that he was of a family of Italian origin. 
He did not bother his head about what they 
thought and applied himself with fervor 
to mastering the science of flying. 

Dick recovered his strength steadily. He 
saw Davenport frequently and the Kings- 


225 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

tons still more frequently. His friendship 
with the Kingstons — particularly with 
Kathleen — deepened without a check. No 
two days ever went by consecutively with- 
out his seeing one or another of that family 
— usually one. 

On a certain Tuesday morning near the 
end of November he left the hospital at ten 
o’clock in high spirits. He had that morn- 
ing discarded his last crutch and now moved 
along with the help of two big sticks. The 
dressing on his head was reduced to one 
thin strip of linen bound smoothly round 
just above the line of his eyebrows. It 
showed beneath his cap and gave him 
somewhat the air of a cheerful brigand. 
Though his left foot came into contact with 
the pavement very gingerly, he twirled one 
of the heavy sticks airily every now and 
again. 


226 


DICK OBLIGES HIS FRIEND 

Dick found Jack Davenport in the li- 
brary. A woman and two little girls were 
leaving the library as he entered. The 
woman was poorly dressed, and her eye- 
lids were red from recent tears — but now 
a look of relief, almost of joy, shone in her 
eyes. She turned on the threshold. 

“Bill will have more heart now, sir, for 
the fighting of his troubles and miseries over 
there,” she said. “If I were to stand and 
talk an hour, sir, I couldn’t tell you what’s 
in my heart — but I say again, God bless 
you for your great kindness!” 

She turned again then and passed Dick, 
and the butler opened the big door and 
bowed her out of the house with an air of 
cheery good will. 

Capt. Starkley-Davenport sat with his 
crutch and stick leaning against the table. 
On the cloth within easy reach his check 
227 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

book lay open before him. He was dressed 
with his usual completeness of detail and 
studied simplicity. 

^‘Have you been boarded yet?’’ asked 
Jack. 

^‘To-morrow,” replied Dick. ‘^All the 
M. O.’s are friends of mine, so I expect 
to wangle back to my battalion in two 
weeks.” 

Jack smiled and shook his head. ‘‘Your 
best friend in the world — or the maddest 
doctor in the army — wouldn’t send you 
back to France on one leg, old son. Six 
weeks is nearer the mark.” 

“I can make it in two. You watch me.” 

“And is it still your old battalion, Dick? 
I have refrained from worrying you about 
it this time, because you deserved a rest — 
but I’m keener than ever to see you in my 
old outfit; and your third pip is there for 
228 


DICK OBLIGES HIS FRIEND 

you to put up on the very day of your 
transfer.” 

‘‘IVe been thinking about it, Jack — and 
of course I’d like to do it because you want 
me to. But the colonel wouldn’t under- 
stand. No one who does not know you 
would understand. People would think I’d 
done it for the step, or that I hadn’t hit it 
off, as an officer, with the old crowd. I 
want to stay, and yet I want to go. I want 
to fight on, as far as my luck will take me, 
with the 26th, and yet I’d be proud as a 
brigadier to sport three pips with your lot. 
As for doing something that you want me 
to do — why, to be quite frank with you, 
there isn’t another man in the world I’d 
sooner please than you. Give me a few 
months more in which to decide. Give me 
until my next leave from France.” 

Dick had become embarrassed toward the 


229 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

end of his speech, and now he looked at 
Davenport with a red face. The other re- 
turned the glance with a flush on his thin 
cheeks. 

“Bless you, Dick,” he said and looked 
away. “Your next leave from France,” he 
continued. “Six or seven months from 
now, with luck. They don’t give me 
much more than that.” Dick stared at his 
friend. 

“I had to send for an M. O. early this 
morning,” Jack went on in a level voice. 
“Wilson did it; he heard me fussing about. 
By seven o’clock there were three of the 
wisest looking me over — all three familiar 
with my case ever since I got out of hospital. 
They can’t do anything, for everything that 
could be removed — German metal — was 
dug out long ago. A few odds and ends 
remain, here and there — and one or another 


230 


DICK OBLIGES HIS FRIEND 

of those is bound to get me within ten 
or twelve months. So it will read 
in the Times as ‘Died of wounds/ after 
all.’’ 

Dick’s face turned white. “Are you 
joking?” he asked. 

“Not I, old son,” said the captain, smil- 
ing. “I have a sense of humor — but it 
doesn’t run quite to that.” 

“And here you are all dolled up in white 
spats! Jack, you have a giant’s heart! 
And worrying about me and your regiment! 
Jack, I’ll do it! I’ll transfer. I’ll put in 
my application to-day.” 

“No. I like your suggestion better. 
Wait till your next leave from France. I 
have taken a fancy to that idea. You’ll 
come home in six or seven months, and you’ll 
ask me to let you put off your decision un- 
til you return again. Of course I shall 
231 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

have to say yes — and, since I am deter- 
mined to see the Essex badges on you, I’ll 
wait another six or seven months. I am 
stubborn. Between your indecision and my 
stubbornness, the chances are that I’ll fool 
the doctors. That would be a joke, if you 
like!” 

Dick hobbled round the table and grasped 
Jack’s hand. 

“Done!” he exclaimed. “I am with you. 
Jack. We’ll play that game for all it is 
worth. But you didn’t seriously believe 
what the doctors said, did you?” 

“Yes, until five minutes ago.” 

“Two years ago they said you would be 
right as wheat in six months ; and now they 
say you will be dead in a year. If they 
think they’re prophets — they are clean off 
their job. Would they bet money on it? 
I don’t think! One year! Fifty years 
232 


DICK OBLIGES HIS FRIEND 

would have sounded almost as knowing and 
a good sight more likely.” 

Dick stayed to luncheon, and he re- 
mained at the table after Wilson had taken 
Jack away to lie down. Wilson came back 
within fifteen minutes and found the 
Canadian subaltern where he had left 
him. 

“Sir, I am anxious about Capt. Jack,” he 
said. 

“Why do you say that?” asked Dick. 

“Sir Peter Bayle and two other medical 
gentlemen of the highest standing warned 
him this very morning, sir, that he was only 
one year more for this world ; and now he 
is singing, sir, — a thing he has not done in 
months, — and a song which runs, sir, with 
your permission, ‘All the boys and girls I 
chance to meet say. Who’s that coming 
down the street? Why, it’s Milly; she’s a 
233 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 


daisy’ — and so on, sir. I fear his wounds 
have affected his mind, sir.” 

“Wilson, I know that song and approve 
of it,” said Dick. “If Sir Peter Bayle told 
you, in November, 1916, that you were to 
die in November, 1917, of wounds received 
in 1914, should you worry? Nix to that! 
You would seriously suspect that Sir Peter 
had his diagnosis of your case mixed up in 
his high-priced noddle with Buchan’s His- 
tory of the War; and if you are the man I 
think you are, you, too, would sing.” 

“I thank you, Mr. Richard. You fill 
my heart with courage, sir,” said Wil- 
son. 

Dick reached the Kingston house at four 
o’clock and was shown as usual into the 
drawing-room. The ladies were not there, 
but an officer whom Dick had never seen 
before stood on the hearthrug with his back 


234 


DICK OBLIGES HIS FRIEND 

to the fire. He wore the crown and star 
of a lieutenant colonel on his shoulders, a 
wound stripe on his left sleeve, the red tabs 
of the general staff on his collar, on his 
right breast the blue ribbon of the Royal 
Humane Society’s medal and on his left 
breast the ribbons of the D. S. O., of the 
Queen’s and the King’s South African 
medals, of several Indian medals and of 
the Legion of Honor. His figure was 
slight and of little more than the medium 
height. A monocle without a cord shone 
in his right eye, and his air was amiable 
and alert. Dick halted on his two sticks 
and said, beg your pardon, sir.” 

The other flashed a smile, advanced 
quickly and in two motions put Dick into 
a deep chair and took possession of the 
sticks. Then he shook the visitor’s hand 
heartily. 


235 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

“Glad to see you,’’ he said. “There is 
no mistaking you. You are Kathleen’s 
Canadian subaltern. I am Kathleen’s 
father.” 

Dick knew that there were plenty of 
suitable things to say in reply, but for the 
life of him he could not think of one of 
them. So he said nothing, but returned 
the colonel’s smile. 

“Don’t be bashful, Dick,” continued the 
other. “I was a boy myself not so long ago 
as you think — but I hadn’t seen a shot fired 
in anger when I was your age. It’s amaz- 
ing. I wonder what weight of metal has 
gone over your head, not to mention what 
has hit you and fallen short. Tons and 
tons, I suppose. It’s an astounding war, to 
my mind. Don’t you find it so?” 

“Yes, sir,” replied Dick. 

“And you are right,” continued the other. 

236 


DICK OBLIGES HIS FRIEND 

“I wish I were your age, so as to see it more 
clearly. Stupendous !” 

At that moment Mrs. Kingston and the 
two girls entered. It had been Dick’s and 
Kathleen’s intention to go out to tea; but 
the colonel upset that plan by saying that 
he was very anxious to hear Dick talk. So 
they remained at home for tea — and the 
colonel did all the talking. Dick agreed 
with everything he said about the war, how- 
ever, and then he said that Dick was right 
— so it really made no difference after 
all which of them actually said the 
things. 

During the ten days of the colonel’s 
leave he and Dick became firm friends. 
They knocked about town together every 
morning, often lunched with Jack Daven- 
port and every afternoon and evening took 
Mrs. Kingston and the girls out. Dick 
237 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

dined at home with the family on the colo- 
nel’s last night of leave. After dinner, 
when the others left the table, the colonel 
detained Dick with a wink. 

“I won’t keep you from Kathleen ten 
minutes, my boy,” he said. “I want to tell 
you, in case I don’t see you again for a long 
time, — meetings between soldiers are un- 
certain things, Dick, — that this little affair 
between you and my daughter has done me 
good to see. You are both babies, so don’t 
take it too seriously. Take it happily. 
Whatever may happen in the future, you 
two children will have something very 
beautiful and romantic and innocent to look 
back at in this war. Though you should 
live to be ninety and marry a girl from As- 
siniboia, yet you will always remember this 
old town with pleasure. If, on the other 
hand, you should continue in your present 
238 


DICK OBLIGES HIS FRIEND 

vein — that is, continue to feel like this after 
you grow up — that it is absolutely necessary 
to your happiness to have tea with my 
daughter every day — well, good luck to 
you! I can’t say more than that, my boy. 
But in the meantime, be happy.” 

Then he shook Dick vigorously by the 
hand, patted his shoulder and pushed him 
out of the room. 

Dick handled the medical, officers so ably 
that he and his transportation were ready 
for France on New Year’s Day. The 
Kingstons saw him off. He found a seat 
in a first-class compartment and deposited 
his haversack in it. Then the four stood 
on the platform and tried in vain to think 
of something to say. Even Mrs. Kings- 
ton was silent. Officers of all ranks of 
every branch of the service, with their 
friends and relatives, crowded the long 


239 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

platform. Late arrivals bundled in and 
out of the carriages, looking for unclaimed 
seats. Guards looked at their bi-g silver 
watches and requested the gentlemen to take 
their seats. Then Mrs. Kingston kissed 
Dick; then Mary kissed him; and then, 
lifted to a state of recklessness, he kissed 
Kathleen on her trembling lips. He saw 
tears quivering in her eyes. 

“When I come back — next leave — will it 
be the same?” he asked. 

She bowed her head, and the tears spilled 
over and glistened on her cheeks. Stand- 
ing in the doorway of the compartment, 
Dick saluted, then turned, trod on the toes 
of a sapper major, moved heavily from 
there to the spurred boots of an artillery 
colonel and sat down violently and blindly 
on his lumpy haversack. The five other 
occupants of the compartment glanced 
240 



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DICK saluted/^ 



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DICK OBLIGES HIS FRIEND 

from Dick to the group on the plat- 
form. 

“We all know it’s a rotten war, old son,” 
said the gunner colonel and, stooping, rub- 
bed the toes of his outraged boots with his 
gloves. 

Dick found many old faces replaced by 
new in the battalion. Enemy snipers, shell 
fire, sickness and promotion had been at 
work. Dick acted as assistant adjutant for 
a couple of weeks and was then posted to 
a company as second in command and 
promised his step in rank at the earliest 
opportunity. In the same company was 
Lieut. Hiram Sill’s platoon. Hiram, busy 
as ever, had distinguished himself several 
times since his return and was in a fair 
way to be recommended for a Military 
Cross. 

The commander of the company was a 


241 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 


middle-aged, amiable person who had been 
worked so hard during the past year that he 
had nothing left to carry on with except 
courage. At sight of Dick he rejoiced, for 
Dick had a big reputation. He took off 
his boots and belt, retired to his blankets and 
told his batman to wake him when the war 
was over. The relief was too much for 
him; it had come too late. The more he 
rested the worse he felt, and at last the 
medical officer sent him out on a stretcher. 
Fever and a general breakdown held him 
at the base for several weeks, and then he 
was shipped to Blighty. So Dick got 
a company and his third star, and no 
one begrudged him the one or the 
other. 

The Canadian Corps worked all winter 
in preparation for its great spring task. 
The Germans fortified and intrenched and 
242 


DICK OBLIGES HIS FRIEND 

mightily garrisoned along all the great 
ridge of Vimy, harrassed the preparing 
legions with shells and bombs and looked 
contemptuously out and down upon us from 
their strong vantage points. Others had 
failed to wrest Vimy from them. But 
night and day the Canadians went on with 
their preparations. 

Word that the United States of America 
had declared war on Germany reached the 
toilers before Vimy on April 7; and within 
the week there came a night of gunfire that 
rocked the earth and tore the air. With 
morning the gunfire ceased, only to break 
forth again in lesser volume as the jumping 
barrages were laid along the ridge; and 
then, in a storm of wind and snow, the bat- 
talions went over on a five-division front, 
company after company, wave after wave, 
riflemen, bombers and Lewis gunners. The 
243 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

Canadians were striking after their winter 
of drudgery. 

One of our men, a Yankee by birth, went 
over that morning with a miniature Stars 
and Stripes tied to his bayonet. We 
cleared out the Huns and took the ridge; 
and for days the water that filled the shell 
holes and mine craters over that ground 
was red with Canadian blood, and the plank 
roads were slippery with it from the pass- 
ing of our wounded. 

Dick went through that fight in front of 
his company and came out of it speechless 
with exhaustion, but unhit. Hiram Sill 
survived it with his arm in a sling. Maj. 
Henry Starkley was wounded again, again 
not seriously. Maj. Patrick Hammond was 
killed, and Corp. Jim Hammond was car- 
ried back the next day with a torn scalp and 
a crushed knee. 


244 


DICK OBLIGES HIS FRIEND 

On the tenth day after that battle Lieut. 
Hiram Sill and his company commander 
were the recipients of extraordinary news. 
Mr. Sill was requested to visit the colonel 
without loss of time. He turned up with- 
in the minute and saluted with his left 
hand. 

‘‘You are wanted back in the U. S. A., 
Hiram, for instructional purposes,” said the 
colonel, looking over a mess of papers at his 
elbow. “You don’t have to go if you don’t 
want to. Here it is — and to be made out 
in triplicate, of course.” 

Hiram examined the papers. 

“And here is something else that will in- 
terest you,” continued the colonel. “News 
for you and 'Dick Starkley. You have your 
M. C.” 

Hiram’s eyes shone. 

“And Dick seems to have hooked the 
245 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

same for his work on the Somme — and I 
had given up all hope of that coming 
through. I recommended him for a D. S. 
O. last week. The .way these recommenda- 
tions for awards are handled beats me. 
They put them all into a hat and then 
chuck the hat out of the window, I guess, 
and whatever recommendations are picked 
up in the street and returned through the 
post are. approved and acted upon. I know 
a chap — come back here!” 

Hiram turned at the door of the hut. 

“Do you intend to accept that job?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“You have a choice between going over 
to the American army with your rank or 
simply being seconded from the Cana- 
dians for that duty. What do you mean 
to do?” 

“Seconded, sir. I am an American citi- 
246 


DICK OBLIGES HIS FRIEND 

zen clear through, colonel, but I have worn 
this cut of uniform too long to change it in 
this war.” 

Hiram found Dick in his billet, reading 
a letter. Dick received the news of the 
awards and of Hiram’s appointment very 
quietly. 

^^Jack Davenport has gone west,” he said. 

Hiram sat down and stared at Dick with- 
out a word. 

‘‘This letter is from Kathleen,” continued 
Dick. “She says Jack went out on Mon- 
day to visit some of the people he helps. 
He had taken on six more widows and seven 
more babies since the Vimy show. On his 
way home towaid evening he and Wilson 
were outside the Blackfriars underground 
station, looking for a taxi, when a lorry took 
a skid fair at an old woman and little boy 
who were just making the curb. Wilson 
247 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 

swears that Jack jumped from the curb as 
if there were nothing wrong with him, 
landed fair in front of the lorry, knocked 
the old woman and kid out from under, but 
fell before he could get clear himself.” 

“Killed?” 

“Instantly.” 

Hiram gazed down at his muddy boots, 
and Dick continued to regard the letter iit 
his hand. 

“Can you beat it?” said Hiram at last. 

Dick got up and paced about the little 
room, busy with his thoughts. Finally he 
spoke. 

“Sacobie is flying, and you are booked for 
the States, and I am going to transfer to 
Jack’s old lot,” he said slowly. 

Hiram looked up at him, but did not 
speak. 

“Jack wanted me to,” continued Dick. 

248 


DICK OBLIGES HIS FRIEND 

^Well, why not? It’s the same old army 
and the same old war. A fellow should 
make an effort to oblige a man like Jack — 
dead or alive.” He was silent for several 
seconds, then went on: “Henry has been 
offered a staff job in London. Peter is safe. 
Sacobie has brought down four Boche 
machines already. What have you heard 
about Jim Hammond?” 

“It’s Blighty for him — and then Canada. 
He’ll never in the world bend that leg 
again.” 

For a while Dick continued to pace back 
and forth across the muddy floor in silence. 

“ We are scattering, Old Psychology,” he 
said. “This war is a great scatterer — but 
there are some things it can’t touch. You’ll 
be homesick at your new job, Hiram, — and 
I’ll be homesick with the Essex bunch, I 
suppose, — but there are some things that 
249 


THE FIGHTING STARKLEYS 


make it all seem worth the rotten misery of 
it.” He glanced down at Kathleen’s letter, 
then put it into his pocket. “Jack Daven- 
port, for one,” he ended. 

“A soldier and a gentlemen,” said Hiram. 

THE END 


250 


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ventures OF Allen West. 

“ The whole range of section railroading is covered in 
the story.” — Chicago Post, 

THE YOUNG TRAIN DISPATCHER 

“A vivacious account of the varied and often hasard- 
ous nature of railroad life.” — Congregationalist, 

THE YOUNG TRAIN MASTER 

“ It is a book that can be unreservedly commended to 
anyone who loves a good, wholesome, thrilling, informing 
yarn.” — Passaic News. 

THE YOUNG APPRENTICE; Or, Allan West’s 
Chum. 

“ The story is intensely interesting.” — Baltimore Sun. 


BOY SCOUT STORIES 

By Brewer Corcoran 

Published with the approval of “The Boy Scouts of 
America/* 

Each, one volume, 12mo, cloth decorative, illus- 
trated, per volume $1.75 

THE BOY SCOUTS OF KENDALLVILLE 

The story of a bright young factory worker who can- 
not enlist because he has three dependents, but his 
knowledge of woodcraft and wig-wagging, gained through 
Scout practice, enables him to foil a German plot to blow 
up the munitions factory. 

THE BOY SCOUTS OF THE WOLF PATROL 

The boys of Gillfield who were not old enough to go 
to war found just as many thrills at home, chasing a 
German spy. 

A — 8 


BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 


THE CARITA SERIES 

By Lucy M. Blanchard 
Each, one voltme, cloth decorative, 12mo, illus- 
trated $ 1.65 

CARITA, AND HOW SHE BECAME A PATRI- 
OTIC AMERICAN 

“ One of the strongest points of the book is the fact 
that its characters seem to be real people, doing the 
things that real people do. More than that, they are 
wholesome, worth-while folks whose companionship in- 
spires a sane and pleasing view of life.” — Salt Lake 
Tribune, Salt Lake City. 

CARITA’S NEW WORLD 

“Wholesome and altogether fascinating; all this can 
be truly said of all of Miss Blanchard’s stories for girls. 
‘Carita’s New World’ has both of these characteristics.” 
— Troy Record, Troy, N. Y. 

“ There is a fine originality about Carita that will make 
her adorable to all girls.” — Oakland Tribune. 


THE MERRYMAKERS SERIES 

By Herschel Williams 

Each, one volume, 12mo, illustrated . , $1.65 

THE MERRYMAKERS IN NEW YORK 

“ The book is bright and clever and gives an excellent 
picture of our great metropolis. One can in his imagina- 
tion see New York most entertainingly through the eyes 
of the young Merrymakers.” — St. Andrew^ s Cross, Philor- 
delphia. 

THE MERRYMAKERS IN CHICAGO 

The Merrymakers who had such a splendid Christmas 
vacation in New York, enjoy another rollicking good 
time, — a summer vacation in Chicago. While brother 
Ned, the young newspaper reporter, “ covers ” the Re- 
publican national convention in Chicago, Carl, the oldest 
of the four sightseeing Merrymakers, decides that he 
wants to own a department store some day, and inciden- 
taHy learns all the steps he must take from being an 
errand boy to a merchant magnate. 

A — 9 


THE PAGE COMPANY’S 


IDEAL BOOKS FOR GIRLS 

Each, one voltpme, cloth decorative, 12mo, . |1.10 

A LITTLE CANDY BOOK FOR A LITTLE GIRL 

By Amy L. Waterman. 

“ This is a peculiarly interesting little book, written in 
the simple, vivacious style that makes these little manuals 
as delightful to read as they are instructive.” — Nash- 
ville Tennessean and American. 

A LITTLE COOK-BOOK FOR A LITTLE GIRL 

By Caroline French Benton. 

This book explains how to cook so simply that no one 
can fail to understand every word, even a complete 
novice. 

A LITTLE HOUSEKEEPING BOOK FOR A 
LITTLE GIRL 

By Caroline French Benton. 

A little girl, home from school on Saturday mornings, 
finds out how to make helpful use of her spare time, and 
also how to take proper pride and pleasure in good 
housework. 

A LITTLE SEWING BOOK FOR A LITTLE 
GIRL 

By Louise Frances Cornell. 

“ It is comprehensive and practical, and yet revealingly 
instructive. It takes a little girl who lives alone with 
lier mother, and shows how her mother taught her the 
art of sewing in its various branches. The illustrations 
aid materially.” — Wilmington Every Evening. 

A LITTLE PRESERVING BOOK FOR A 
LITTLE GIRL 

By Amy L. Waterman. 

In simple, clear wording, Mrs. Waterman explains 
every step of the process of preserving or “canning” 
fruits and vegetables. 

A LITTLE GARDENING BOOK FOR A LITTLE 
GIRL 

By Peter Martin. 

This little volume is an excellent guide for the young 
gardener. In addition to truck gardening, the book gives 
valuable information on flowers, the planning of the 
garden, selection of varietieSs etc. 

A — 10 


BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 


THE LITTLE COLONEL BOOKS 

(Trade Mark) 

By Annie Fellows Johnston 
Each large 12mo^ cloth, illustrated, per volume , $1.90 

THE LITTLE COLONEL STORIES 

(Trade Mark) 

Being three Little Colonel ” stories in the Cosy Comer 
Series, “ The Little Colonel,” “ Two Little Knights of 
Kentucky,” and “ The Giant Scissors,” in a single volume. 

THE LITTLE COLONEL’S HOUSE PARTY 

(Trade Mark) 

THE LITTLE COLONEL’S HOLIDAYS 

(Trade Mark) 

THE LITTLE COLONEL’S HERO 

(Trade Mark) 

THE LITTLE COLONEL AT BOARDING- 

(Trade Mark) 

SCHOOL 

THE LITTLE COLONEL IN ARIZONA 

(Trade Mark) 

THE LITTLE COLONEL’S CHRISTMAS 

(Trade Mark) 

VACATION 

THE LITTLE COLONEL, MAID OF HONOR 

(Trade Mark) 

THE LITTLE COLONEL’S KNIGHT COMES 

(Trade Mark) 

RIDING 

THE LITTLE COLONEL’S CHUM, MARY 

WARE (Trade Mark) 

MARY WARE IN TEXAS 
MARY WARE’S PROMISED LAND 

These twelve volumes, boxed as a set, $22.80. 

A — 11 


THI^ PAGE tVMPANTS 


SPECIAL HOLIDAY EDITIONS 

Back small quarto, cloth decorative t per volume . $1.50 

New plates, hanasomely illustrated with eight full-page 
drawings in color, and many marginal sketches. 

THE LITTLE COLONEL 

(Trade Mark) 

TWO LITTLE KNIGHTS OF KENTUCKY 
BIG BROTHER 

THE JOHNSTON JEWEL SERIES 

Each small 16mo, cloth decorative, with frontispiece 

and decorative text borders, per volume $0.75 

IN THE DESERT OF WAITING: The Legend 
OP Camels ACK Mountain. 

THE THREE WEAVERS: A Fairy Tale fob 
Fathers and Mothers as Well as for Their 
Daughters. 

KEEPING TRYST: A Tale op King Arthur^s" 
Time. 

THE LEGEND OF THE BLEEDING HEART 
THE RESCUE OF PRINCESS WINSOME: 

A Fairy Play for Old and Young. 

THE JESTER’S SWORD 


THE LITTLE COLONEL’S GOOD TIMES 
BOOK 

Uniform in size with the Little Colonel Series . $2.50 

Bound in white kid (morocco) and gold . 5.00 

Cover design and decorations by Peter Verberg. 

“ A mighty attractive volume in which the owner may 
record the good times she has on decorated pages, and 
under the directions as it were of Annie Fellows Johni- 
Bton.” — Buffalo Express* 

A — 12 


BOOKS FOB YOUNG PEOPLE 


THE LITTLE COLONEL DOLL BOOK — First 
Series 

Quarto, boards, printed in colors . . . ,^1.90 

A series of “ Little Colonel ” dolls. Each has several 
changes of costume, so they can be appropriately clad 
for the rehearsal of any scene or incident in the series. 

THE LITTLE COLONEL DOLL BOOK — Sec- 
ond Series 

Quarto, boards, printed in colors . . , $1.90 

An artistic series of paper dolls, including not only 
lovable Mary Ware, the Little Colonel’s chum, but many 
another of the much loved characters which appear in 
the last three volumes of the famous “Little Colonel 
Series.” 

THE STORY OF THE RED CROSS: as Told to 
the Little Colonel 

Cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated . . . $1.96 

This story originally appeared in “ The Little Colonel’s 
Hero,” but the publishers decided to issue it as a 
separate volume. 

“No one could tell the story of the Red Cross with 
more vividness and enthusiasm than this author, and 
here she is at her best. No book published during the 
Great War is niore valuable and timely than this appeal- 
ing story of the beginning of the Red Cross.” — New 
York Tribune. 

“ It deserves a place in every school as well as in 
every home where the work of the Red Cross is appre- 
ciated.” — Evening Express, Portland, Me. 

“Not only VERY interesting, but has large educa- 
tional value.” — Lookout, Cincinnati, Ohio. 

JOEL: A BOY OF GALILEE 

12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated . . . $1.90 

“ The book is a very clever handling of the greatest 
event in the history of the world.” — Rochester^ N. Y., 
Herald. 

A — 13 


THE PAGE C0MPANT8 


THE LITTLE COUSINS OF LONG 
AGO SERIES 

The volumes in this series describe the boys and girls 
of ancient times. 

Each small 12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, 90c. 

OUR LITTLE ATHENIAN COUSIN OF LONG 
AGO 

By Julia Darrow Cowles. 

OUR LITTLE CARTHAGINIAN COUSIN OF 
LONG AGO 

By Clara V. Winlow. 

OUR LITTLE CELTIC COUSIN OF LONG AGO 

By Evaleen Stein. 

OUR LITTLE FRANKISH COUSIN OF LONG 
AGO 

By Evaleen Stein. 

OUR LITTLE MACEDONIAN COUSIN OF 
LONG AGO 

By Julia Darrow Cowles. 

OUR LITTLE NORMAN COUSIN OF LONG 
AGO 

By Evaleen Stein. 

OUR LITTLE ROMAN COUSIN OF LONG AGO 

By Julia Darrow Cowles. 

OUR LITTLE SAXON COUSIN OF LONG AGO 

By Julia Darrow Cowles. 

OUR LITTLE SPARTAN COUSIN OF LONG 
AGO 

By Julia Darrow Cowles. 

OUR LITTLE VIKING COUSIN OF LONG AGO 

By Charles H. L. Johnston. 

A— U 


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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



